Comfort on the Edge of Reason
by Lesera128
Summary: Chicago. Halloween 1923. The witch Temperance Brennan encounters Angel for the first time since he'd been ensouled. Bones/Angel crossover. Very, very AU. Sequel to "Toe to Toe," "Barging In" and "Making Him Beg." Complete.
1. Part I: Accidental Comfort

**Comfort on the Edge of Reason**

**By:** Lesera128 and dharmamonkey

**Rated: **M

**Disclaimer: **Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from _Bones _or _Angel... _or anything else. Yes, we're wreaking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? ::blinks:: Good. Then, moving on―

**Summary: **Chicago. Halloween 1923. The witch Temperance Brennan encounters Angel for the first time since he'd been ensouled. Bones/Angel crossover. Very, very AU. Sequel to "Toe to Toe," "Barging In" and "Making Him Beg."

**A/N: **This story is the fourth in a series of nine projected pieces that chronicle the relationship between Angel(us) and Dr. Temperance Brennan. If you haven't read the first three pieces in this story (as listed above), we're pretty certain you're going to be confused. This piece, which started out as a one-shot, mushroomed into a monster of approximately 42 thousand words. That's why we have split it into three parts. We hope it's more manageable this way. But, again, no surprise here...we're wordy. For those who don't like that...well. ::shrugs:: It's just as we are. Anyway, all three parts will be posting in one day. We hope you enjoy.

UNF ALERT: While this piece may be rather subdued compared to some of its older siblings, just to make certain we've dotted our i's and crossed our t's...here goes. Please skip this piece if naughty language, adult situations (both of a mystical and physical nature), and other things we can't think of at the moment, that aren't intended for the faint-hearted, don't appeal to you. As for those who are familiar with dharmashera's schtick...the unfness is coming. Promise. Just be patient. We hope it's as good for you as it was for us. ;)

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**Part I: Accidental Comfort**

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She didn't know why she was still out as late as she was given the fact that it was Halloween. She knew she needed to return to her apartment to complete her observance of the Samhain ritual. But, there was something about the night that had made her restless and so she'd dawdled longer than she knew she should've on a regular night let alone one as special as this.

There was always a certain energy about the night any time, and she wondered if she could feel it most strongly since she'd yet to focus her mind and powers enough to complete her yearly observance. It wasn't as if most of what she'd already done in the course of her day wasn't probably enough to satisfy the constraints that had been put on her as a result of the various obligations that she'd occurred over the many centuries of life that she'd lived. She knew, after celebrating so many Samhains, that there wasn't a single all-important ritual that would make or break her observance. More plainly, it was an aggregate accumulation of all the small ways she honored the most holy of days for her people. But still, as she resigned herself to the fact that it was time to return home at last, she felt something gnawing at her. She couldn't tell what it was or what it might herald, and that, in turn, annoyed her even more. After almost four hundred years, she knew there was rarely a situation or reaction to something that she hadn't experience at some point in her life. Still, no matter how hard still tried, she couldn't quite tell why she was feeling the way she was. All she knew was that the more she thought about it, the more she came to believe that the nervous—or rather, expectant—energy that she felt was happening for a reason..and whatever that reason was, it signified that something of great import was about to happen to her.

Glancing up at the sky as she crossed Clark Street, she continued walking towards her home in the Gold Coast District of Chicago. There was a piercing breeze coming up off of Lake Michigan that made her wrap her dark red velvet coat tighter around her slender body.

_Perhaps it's the full moon_, Brennan thought as she continued walking. _Maybe, just...combined with the sabbath, it's just all merged together to make me feel strange? Because, it's almost as if...well, it's like I can feel something near coming towards me, but I'm not certain what it is. I don't know what it is, but I know...I can __feel_ _it. Something's coming... _Suddenly, a quote from one of her favorite Shakespearean plays echoed in her mind. _"By the pricking of my thumbs,/ Something wicked this way comes."_

Shaking off the ominous feeling, Brennan continued walking towards her apartment building. She knew she needed to get a fairly decent night's sleep given that her afternoon the following day would be a demanding one devoted to conducting research in advance of her meeting the following week. She knew she had a slew of journal articles and letters to read to make certain she was as up-to-date as possible on a number of attempts to acquire new artifacts for the museum, as well as funding new expeditions in Egypt, Arabia, and Mesoamerica that might also yield new finds for Breasted's collection.

_Whenever I'm meeting with Breasted. it always takes a tremendous amount of hard work and preparation so he doesn't catch me off guard since he doesn't easily suffer fool. And, since I'm meeting with him next week, I need to make a substantial effort this week to concentrate and not to get distracted_, Brennan mentally sighed as she thought about the founder of the Oriental Institute that had been founded at the University of Chicago four years earlier. _Besides, let's face it_—_it's not like he's agreed to continue meeting with me because he has any plans to ever open up the graduate program at the university to female students interested in archaeology or anthropology. Whenever he sees me, it's just as another donor. I'm no different to him than Rockefeller or any of the other big spenders. To Breasted, we're just dollar signs on legs. He'd much rather be working with his hieroglyphs and the other artifacts he managed to procure from various antiquities dealers in Egypt than working with administrators or non-academics. And, in a way, I can respect that about the man. Given our many conversations about his work and interests, I think he does have a small amount of patience for me_—_even if I __am__ a female, since we do seem to share a love of the field of anthropology. So, that's fine. No matter how I get him to pay attention with me, it's fine, because he serves my purposes for now. It's not that I don't have time to wait for the changes that need to be made so that I can enter the program to come about. I just wish that it would happen sooner rather than later._

Brennan, still walking in a slightly distracted way, continued to think of the inevitable turn to which her conversations with Breasted always took by the end of their dialogue. _I must admit, I think I find his work on linguistics to be quite...boring. Bones seem more interesting to me. I've tried to tell him that_—_everything that anyone could ever need or want to know is right there in the skeleton, but I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree about that one. Even still, if he wants my latest donation for the Institute increased, he's got to know that I'll want to see Meresamun's sarcophagus again. I know there's not a chance he'll actually open the damn thing, given what he had to do to get it here from Karnak, but still, I want to see it again. _

The strange feeling that Brennan had momentarily been distracted by before she'd become lost in her thoughts about the Oriental Institute was eventually forgotten as she continued towards home. The Gold Coast neighborhood suited her purposes quite well given the type of life she'd decided to lead since she'd left London in the late 1890s and found a new home. The neighborhood had been built on the north side of downtown by millionaire Potter Palmer after the Great Fire had destroyed so much of the city in 1882. Many of the wealthiest citizens of Chicago had migrated there from the swanky south side neighborhoods they'd once frequented. And, eventually, Palmer's investments in what once had been a mud-filled backwater swamp, had slowly given birth to an area that had become home to some of the most wealthy, most powerful, and most influential people in the city. Brennan felt at great comfort in the highly cultured and extremely affluent environment, coming to think of it as her second home once she'd left her homeland more than thirty years earlier.

After having spent some time in Egypt, and on the Arabian peninsula, she'd eventually immigrated to America. She'd chosen Chicago as her new home after having spent some time sampling the environs of cities like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Out of all of them, the young city of Chicago had suited her best. She liked how the city had retained a pulsing energy as it matured even in the buzz of growth it had enjoyed in anticipation of, during, and just after the conclusion of the glamorous World's Fair in 1893. It also appealed to Brennan that the modern city seemed to be at the crux of what she knew would soon be a booming anthropological center of academic research and development. She could see the the shift that was occurring as scholars helped shift archaeology from a highly inconsistent world of antiquities dealers to a more standardized and rigorous academic field. She also thought that if it was only a matter of time that was needed before she'd officially be able to take part in the challenge that the field offered her, she knew she could wait—as time was the one thing that she _definitely _had more than enough given her already very long-lived life.

Such thoughts were swirling in her head when suddenly she abruptly stopped as she felt a sharp twang of energy pierce her conscious mind. It was almost as if someone had sharply whistled and had drawn her attention. The sensation wasn't unpleasant, per se, but it was very, _very _distinctive. And, it was that distinctiveness that made her heart rate increase and her breathing grow rapid and shallow. The sensation wasn't unknown to her—but she hadn't felt it in so long that she'd almost forgotten what it felt like, and that fact startled her. Knowing that it could only be happening for one reason, Brennan's head turned as she lifted her eyes to scan the mostly deserted street. Even as she looked, she pushed away the absurdity of the idea that he'd be there for some inexplicable reason. Because, even as she searched, in that moment, she knew—she _knew _that there was only one explanation as to why she could be feeling _that_ sensation at _that _moment in time and in _that _place.

_Angelus? _she thought, as she continued to scan the area for the one person—the _only _person that she knew of—who could elicit such a response from her.

The darkness of the streets, dimly lit as they were, weren't _too _much of a challenge to her. She just needed a short amount of time to adjust. At first, she didn't see anything. But, when she realized with whom she was dealing, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and focused her other senses. It took her a few minutes, but, eventually, she could sense the distinct pulse of energy that he'd always wrought when he came near her.

Her eyes snapped open, and walking forward with nothing but her instinct to guide her, she walked in a random direction. After ten minutes, she began to doubt that her skills were as attuned to him as they needed to be in order for her to successfully track her prey. It had been, after all, a long time since she'd used such talents. Swallowing once, as she felt her frustration at not knowing where he was increase, she wondered if perhaps he was hiding from her as a part of a game.

_But, given the fact that it's been almost twenty-five years since I've last seen him, surely he'd forgo the initial games and save them for later, wouldn't he_? she asked herself. _In such things I know he has as little patience as I do to waste time in such a way, particularly when we'd have more time to devote to such...well...pleasurable pastimes if he stopped this insane bout of hide and go seek. _She stopped, silently calling out to him, even though there was no real reason she had to think that he could hear her._ Angelus? Where are you?_

Given how distracted in the time since she'd been gone from London twenty-five years earlier, while her thoughts had from time to time, in odd moments, drifted to the vampire who'd been her on-again/off-again lover, she hadn't realized until that very time how long it had actually been since she'd seen him. At first, when she'd left London in 1898, and he'd failed to meet her in Cairo as they'd tentatively agreed the following spring, she'd wondered what had happened to him. Although she didn't like to openly admit it, after a time, she'd simply pushed thoughts of Angelus from her mind. It was made easier by the fact that —but for the occasional letter that flittered to her from Darla, as her very old friend gallivanted to and fro across different parts of the world—she hadn't really heard any news of Angelus in some time. Once she started to think about it, she realized how vague most of Darla's letters had been. As she struggled to recall if she'd ever once passed along any information about Angelus by name, Brennan frowned. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that Brennan hadn't heard any substantial news from or about the vampire since they'd last seen each other in London shortly before he'd been set to travel to eastern Europe with Darla, Drusilla, and the poet William on what Angelus had joked was a pleasure jaunt to see if Dracula was 'real.' But, now, if he was here, in Chicago—well, after all this time, Brennan wondered why he would waste time and not just seek her out straightaway. Given the disparate lives they'd always led, she thought, surely it couldn't be from any discomfort on his part. She struggled to understand why he would be doing such a thing.

_Is this some type of new game that you've discovered since last we saw one another?_ she silently wondered. _Is that it? After all this time, finally, are you here for me? Are you ready now, after all this time, to come and play with me, sweetness? Because, if you are, that's one thing. That's fine. But...why all this subterfuge? Why hide yourself from me? Unless you're choosing to make some grand type of entrance here as apart of your new game. Is that it? Because, if it is, then perhaps I need to remind you that I've little time or patience for such follies...outside of the bedroom that is. So, come on, Angelus. Where are you? _

Taking another deep breath, Brennan closed her eyes and tried to center herself so that she could draw upon her powers. She was already very powerful, she knew, because of what night it was, in addition to the fact that it was also a full moon. Many different type of energies churned about her. She could feel them swirling about—the pull of the ancient powers as the veil between the two worlds thinned, the cull of the moon, and...the lure of _him_. She concentrated on the final of the trio of feelings. Of the three, it was the that distinct sensation that she used as her anchor. After a time—who knew how long, for Brennan certainly didn't—her body started to hum with a familiar tingling. Eventually, a small amount of light blue energy started to radiate out from her as her eyes snapped open. Her eyes wide open, Brennan immediately knew in which direction she needed to look. Walking forward, as if she was a piece of steel drawn to the magnet of his being, she recrossed the street with deliberation and purpose. She continued to walk, eventually increasing her speed as she knew she was closing the distance between them. Ahead of her, she could hear the faint echo of retreating footfalls, but she didn't care. Her target sought, she let her powers guide her as she increased her speed again and again. She ignored everything but the sensation...the feeling...the lure of him. And, after a chase that had lasted almost an half-hour, she knew she'd finally achieved a victory of sorts when she at last cornered him in a blind alley way.

Her chest heaved as she sucked in sharp breaths of the frosty autumn air. The gulps of cold air pierced her chest in a mildly unpleasant way. However, she ignored it as she slowed her speed and took up a position a few feet away from him. Placing her hands on her hips, she licked her dry lips and felt a flush of warmth as she wondered how she would lord over him to celebrate her victory in this the first round of this new game between them.

But, after another minute, when he made no move to come towards her and remained silent, something unpleasant twisted in her stomach. The teasing smile that had been tugging at the corner of her lips quickly disappeared as a worried frown replaced it. Narrowing her pale eyes, she tried to take stock of what she saw before her. To say that it surprised her was to put it mildly.

As soon as she saw him, hunched in the shadows...bent over and hiding, she knew _something _was wrong. By the time she stepped forward into the warm light that the single street lamp at the head of the alley offered by way of illumination, she confirmed what she'd already known in her heart—it was _him. _

Quirking an eyebrow at him, she extended a hand towards him and gestured with one of her gloved fingers. "I found you," she said, quite pleased with herself as she looked at him, reassuring herself that, yes, he was really there, and no, she wasn't imagining things. Pushing away the earlier concern she'd felt, she allowed herself to revel in the brief moment of happiness she felt at finally seeing him. She smiled at him as her chest heaved and her cheeks had become a rosy red through her exertions of their chase.

Stepping out of the shadows and coming towards her, Angel didn't seem surprised at her words. In fact, he'd recognized the only person to whom the voice could've belonged long before she'd actually spoken. Unable to help himself, as if he was compelled by her to come forward—although, after so much time, he knew that it was none of her magicks that drew him to her—he stopped when no more than a foot separated them. The blue energy that had indicated that she'd used her powers to track him had already faded away by the time he brought his gaze to meet that of the woman who had so tenaciously matched pace with him.

Hungrily drinking in the sight of her, his eyes skimming over the architecture of her face, a small grin cracked his face for what he knew to be the first time in years. She wore her hair a bit differently then he remembered it from when he'd last sojourned with her in London, and her clothes had changed with the fashions, but everything else—her straight, thin-lipped mouth, her square jaw, her small, slightly turned-up nose, her pendular earlobes, and above all else, her eyes...her piercing pale blue eyes that were constantly flickering in one way or the other, whether she was angry or amused or lustful or thinking furiously about something—was the same as he'd remembered. For all the years he'd spent alone after slipping back into the shadows in Cairo, he'd thought about her frequently—several times a day, every day, for twenty-five years—remembering what she looked like, what she sounded like, how she felt in his arms, and what she tasted and smelled like. _After all these years, _he thought. _It's her. _He narrowed his eyes and took a closer look, still struggling to believe what he saw even though his nose had earlier caught the scent of her and confirmed what he'd suspected as he'd recognized the unique rhythm of her footsteps pursuing him. _Brennan..._

Tilting his head, he felt an unfamiliar warmth in his chest as he nodded and said softly, "Aye, lass...that you have."

She didn't need to say a word as she gestured with her hand towards him for a second time. He knew what she wanted from him, and when he combined what he'd been through over the years since last he'd seen her, with the fact that it was _her _doing the asking, Angel knew he had no choice but to say yes. All those nights, wandering the streets of cities from Lahore to Lima, and during the long days in between sleeping under bridges, in abandoned buildings, and in the shadows of dark alleys where he could escape the sun's searing rays for a few hours, he thought of her. Awash in the memories of a hundred thousand evils he'd perpetrated over the nearly century and a half he'd lived without a soul, driven only by the roaring engine of his own appetites, Angel knew he'd only managed as long as he had, as well as he had—if one could call it that—because he'd nursed the memories of her all those years. When she extended her hand to him, he felt his cheeks flush despite the bitter cold of the biting wind blowing off Lake Michigan, and he sensed that, somehow, his wanderings had finally taken him back to the only home he'd known in sixty-odd years...

_Her._

He smiled faintly and swallowed, but said nothing. He stood up to his full height, brushed the sawdust and wood splinters off his trousers and nodded. Grabbing her hand, he held it tightly as she lead him out of the alley and back out into the world.

They'd traveled in almost complete silence, but for the sound of her breath and the combined footfalls of their respective gaits as they quickly threaded their way through the largely empty sidewalks of downtown Chicago. Still, with every step they took, they took it together since she refused to let go of her tight grasp on his hand. By the time they'd reached her apartment, it finally occurred to her that while she had a great many questions to ask him, there was one she could answer herself. It had seemed that, no matter how far they'd journeyed, an offensive odor had trailed after them. Once she'd unlocked the door, and pulled him in behind her, when the smell followed behind them, her nose crinkled and her brow furrowed.

She locked the front door behind them and hesitated for only the briefest of moments before speaking. "I'm afraid it's just you and I tonight," she said. "Whatever we have need of, I'm afraid we'll have to make do since I already gave my staff the night and the next few days off because it's the sabbath, and I usually prefer to observe it in my own private ways."

"Oh," Angel said awkwardly, slightly taken aback by her words "I hadn't realized...that is...I can leave if you—"

She spun sharply to face him as she quickly shook her head. "I think not," she told him. "I only mention it because you, sweetness, are anything but at the moment, and I didn't want you to wonder why I'm the one who will have to wait on you while we do something to remedy that situation."

"Wait on me?" he said with a crooked smile making his wan face look slightly less haggard. "I must say, that's a new one, huh?"

She shook her head, smiled and said, "Don't get too cocky. And, don't get too used to the idea, either. I haven't turned over a new leaf in subservience since last we saw one another, just in case you're wondering."

"Oh?" he grinned. "Then, what is so compelling that it's cast you in the role of would-be housemaid, hmmm?"

She stared at him for a long moment, and then, despite what concerns she'd felt earlier at his appearance, decided that to be anything less than her usual forthright self would be both disingenuous and unfair to both of them. "I'm sure you must be aware of the fact, but in case it somehow escaped you—you reek, sweetness. So, before we so much as share even so much as a bit more of conversation, I must insist that you take a long, hot bath. I assume you don't have a problem with that, unless this is some strange predilection for offending polite sensibilities with dirt, grime, and rank body odor that you've developed since last we met him, hmmm?"

Angel's lips again twitched as he considered her point and then slowly shook his head. "No, I haven't," he said simply.

"Good, then," Brennan smiled, obviously satisfied at his reply. "Then, we're agreed?"

Again, Angel simply nodded in response to her query. And, that was how he found himself sitting in her bathtub, the scalding water soothing away the cold and loneliness of the streets that had frozen him since he'd been ensouled so many years earlier. As he lay in the hot water, he wondered if any amount of bathing could ever cleanse the filth he felt inside, even after decades of having given up the murderous ways that had filled his nights for that nearly a century and a half before that. His nostrils filled with a floral scent—something she'd added to the bath before he'd stepped in, which he at first found slightly offensive but had accepted as the price of getting a long-awaited bath—and he wondered if it would be enough to cover up the stink of sweat and dirt that clung to him. As he listened to her fussing around in her kitchen, he felt his belly flip at the thought of being with her again, after so many years of having only his memories of her to keep him company.

He stared at his knees as they poked out of the water, and then at his hands as he closed his fingers into a fist. He remembered the last night he'd been with her, before he went to Romania, and the image of his hand pressing into her mattress as he moved inside of her. Angel flexed his hand and could see how his fingers were leaner, the sinews and veins of his hand exposed more prominently now than they had been when he'd last been with her in London. He frowned at seeing the dirt under his fingernails. He reached for the bar of soap of the ledge, rolled it between his hands and began to rub the lather into his chest. He knew he'd changed, but he desperately didn't want to be feel embarrassed now that he was in her company once more. So, he worked to clean himself and hoped that maybe her soap had some type of miraculous powers of which he was unaware as he waited for her to come back to him.

For her part, after they'd entered her apartment and made their bargain, Brennan had shooed Angel into the master bathroom before she took the opportunity to divest her own clothing. The bitter night's cold had left her feeling numb in places herself, and that was with the heaviness of a thick coat, warm gloves, and cushioned boots to protect her from the damp, bone-gnawing piercing chill that came off of the lake at this time of year. Once she'd struggled out of her boots, and she'd dropped her clothing in a pile on a chaise lounge that sat opposite her large four-poster cherrywood king-sized bed, she then turned to procure a change of fresh clothing. Going to her armoir, she leaned in and retrieved a black satin robe. She quickly pulled it over her naked body, looping the sash closed at her waist before she turned around and studied her immediate surroundings though she already knew what was there to be found.

She clucked her tongue as she realized how dark and cold the room was, and she knew she didn't really want to waste the time or expend a tremendous amount manual effort to make it less so. That said, Brennan realized, she knew she really only had one choice in how to proceed and that involved using her powers. In recent years, she'd tried to rely less and less on her magicks, finding it a challenge to do things the old-fashioned way when she could. However, given the fact that she'd already used her skills to aid in chasing Angelus through the streets of Chicago, she figured that she was in for a penny and in for a pound by that point.

Her decision made, in a matter of minutes, a warm and cozy fire was blazing in her bedroom's hearth and several candles added an inviting glow instead of the electric light fixtures that normally illuminated the room. She was just about to turn and head towards the bathroom, having already acquired several plush maroon colored towels from her linen closet when she stopped mid-stride. As she thought of the image of Angelus that had greeted her in the alleyway, another thought occurred to her. Nodding to herself, she reversed course and walked back out of the bedroom towards her apartment's outer rooms.

Padding into her kitchen, she set the towels down on the counter before she went to the ice chest and surveyed its contents. An open bottle of red wine she'd had with her dinner the night before caught her attention. Pursing her lips as she weighed her options, after a few seconds, her decision made, she reached in and pulled the bottle of wine out from where it had rested on one of the small refrigerator shelves. Going back to the living room, she approached her bar and retrieved a large cut-glass crystal tumbler. She poured a healthy amount of the wine into the glass and then set about to the more complicated part of her task By the time she'd retrieved the towels and walked back into the bathroom, the glass she held in her hand no longer held the pungent merlot that she'd originally poured, but a different type of liquid...one much thicker and more metallic-smelling in nature. She carried the towels and glass back into the bedroom, made her way into the bathroom, and didn't say a word before she set the towels down on the bathroom counter and then walked towards the tub with the glass extended towards him in offering.

"Here," she said as she proffered the glass to him. She watched him hesitate for some reason. Cocking her head, Brennan encouraged him with a jerk of her chin and a reassuring smile. "Go ahead. Take it."

"What is it?" he croaked, shifting his hips in the porcelain tub with an audible squeak.

"Not the real thing, I'm afraid, but perhaps close enough so that it will help take the edge off," she said as she gestured with the glass. "I'm a bit rusty at the transfiguration spells, but hopefully it will serve."

He stared at the thick, dark red liquid and frowned. "How did you know?"

She considered his question for a moment and then rolled her shoulders slightly. "I don't know," she said. "I just did."

He gave her a strange look before he said, "What is it?" When she quirked an eyebrow at him and started to open her mouth to speak, he clarified, "I mean, what kind is it? I-I...well..." His mouth hung open as he struggled for words, running his hand through his dark, greasy hair as he watched her. "Not that I want to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything, but I...uhhh, that is—"

Brennan watched in clear amusement as she asked, "Angelus...are you nervous about something?"

He nodded as he gave her a strange, weary-eyed look. "Yes," he admitted. "A bit, I guess."

"Well, I know it can't be me," Brennan replied instantly, as she studied him for a moment. She paused as she saw him look away and then modified her statement in a slightly softer voice. "Can it?"

"No," he said quickly. A warm smile spread across his face, and he looked into her eyes for a long moment. "No, it's not you. Not at all." He pressed his lips into a firm line as he stared into the glass of blood, glancing back up and watching her eyes as she watched him, his gaze skimming over her features as he tried to cobble together an explanation in his mind that would make sense and, at least as important in that moment, not upset her. "No," he said. "It's...well...I'm not sure how to explain it. It's that, well..."

Once more, his voice trailed off, and he gave Brennan an uncomfortable look as he left his sentence unfinished. For her part, she wasn't quite certain how to react. She continued to look at him for a couple of minutes before she sighed.

"If it's not me," she began. "Then, what is it? You only started to get that squirrely look that you have in your eyes right now when I mentioned that I'd used a transfiguration spell to create the blood." She stopped, noticing his brow crinkle in response to her words, and then considered what she'd just said. "Oh," she eventually said quietly before her features changed once more and considered how to respond to him.

"What?" he asked her, curious to know as to what kind of answer her mind might've come up with since he hadn't yet said a word that would've revealed the true reason he'd been nervous since she'd entered the bathroom.

"I'm just thinking that I-I..." she began, but her voice trailed off and left the sentence unfinished.

She then looked at him. While her eyes were filled with some type of emotion that seemed both nervous and hesitant at the same time, as Angel studied her, he couldn't figure out what she was thinking.

"Brennan?" he asked, his voice soft.

"It's not...well, it's not—you're not uncomfortable with me because I-I...it's not that I used magic to do it, is it?" she questioned him. Once she finally saw a sheepish look cross Angel's face—and a faint smile cracked his visage as he shook his head—Brennan, too, relaxed. "Really?" she looked at him with a slightly halting disbelief present in her voice even as she gave him a faint smile. "You know, if you were uneasy because...well, if it was because of my powers...you needn't fear, sweetness. I'm not of a mind to use them to tie you up." His eyebrow arched at her comment, and she couldn't help herself as the faint smile that had cracked her serious face grew as she added playfully, "At least, not yet."

"Aye, well, then you can hardly blame me for being a bit twitchy, ehhh?" he said, slightly surprised even as he spoke that some of his faded Galway twang had started to reassert itself around her.

A smile danced across his lips briefly as he thought of the half-dozen times she'd bound him over the years, and how some of the most incredible nights he'd spent in her bed had begun, or involved at some point, his wrists being bound and affixed to some object in her home—sometimes with rope and, more often, with bindings of braided blue light. He thought of one of their last nights together, and how she had bound him with her magic, torturing him in a way he would never speak of to another soul, but which had driven him over the edge with want of her.

Then he thought of leaving her and making his way down to the seaport where he joined up with Darla, William, and Drusilla to catch a steamer to Istanbul, from where they journeyed on to Bucharest. He then remembered the night he ceased being the living nightmare feared by millions across Europe and was instead plunged into his own unending nightmare.

He paled a bit at the memory and shrugged silently. "It's not like I've had that good a run of things where magics are concerned lately, so, yes, I can admit it. Magic makes me a bit nervous these days...although that's not why I...umm, was a bit uneasy...at least, not completely." She met his gaze, and she looked deeply into his troubled eyes. She wanted to ask to what he was referring to, but something stilled her tongue. Angel blinked a few times, and when she still didn't ask the question that they both knew was on the tip of her tongue, he nodded at the glass and inquired, "So, if you transfigured it...what is it? Or, at least, what's it supposed to be?"

Instantly taking his meaning, Brennan answered, "Cattle...or at least as close as I could conjure it. I'm not certain how it actually tastes, because like I said, it's been a good long while since I had need of one of those spells. But...I figured...at least, I'd try. I didn't think that it could hurt?"

Angel nodded his thanks and then raised the cut-crystal glass to his lips, pausing briefly before taking a sip. He let the lukewarm, coppery liquid coat his tongue, testing it, before taking another, longer draught. As he savored the taste, he resisted the urge to close his eyes at how wonderful the liquid felt as it slipped down the back of his throat. He felt an intense urge to guzzle the bright red liquid in three gulps and beg her for more, but pride restrained him. Instead, he acted to swallow the blood in measured tastes, trying to show her that he wasn't the complete dirty street rat that he felt like. After one long sip, he lowered the glass and tilted his head at her. "Yes," he nodded. "It's fine. It'll do...thank you."

Brennan again held his gaze as she nodded her acceptance of his thanks. She quieted again, studying the part of his upper body that was visible above the waterline. Her eyes followed the long line along his shoulder to his collarbone, which stood out a bit more prominently than it had the last time she had seen it, hemmed in by strong, taut muscles which had now shrunken somewhat from malnutrition and neglect. Brennan's gaze moved down to his chest, pausing briefly to note he still had some definition in his chest despite the way his ribs were visible along the sides, then skimming down to his navel and biting the inside of her lip to suppress a smile at seeing the faint line of fine dark hair that trailed down from his belly button and disappeared under the soapy water. "How long has it been?" she finally asked him, unable to resist being drawn to him any longer as she sat down at the edge of the white claw-footed tub. "Since you fed?"

He closed his eyes and swallowed hard, letting the tumbler rest on the rim of the tub, just inches from Brennan's thigh. He looked at the way his fingers curled around the glass and realized then how much more slender they were than they had been the last time he'd twirled a lock of her auburn hair around his forefinger. He glanced up at her and knew from the look in her eyes that she knew him, and his body, well enough to see how he had withered to a shadow of his former strength. He blushed and looked away, staring down into the bathwater. "It's been lean pickin's for a long time," he said vaguely, bringing his eyes up again to meet hers briefly and then blinked his gaze away again. "I haven't had a good meal in..." He stared at the blood in the glass and splashed at the water in the tub, fidgeting at he averted his gaze from hers. "Months. Six, perhaps. I dunno, maybe seven."

She stared at him for a minute and then reached out to tuck an errant strand of his lank black hair behind his ear. "You know the next question I'm going to ask you, right?"

"Umm, no," he murmured, raising his glass again and hiding his mouth behind the brim as he cringed inside. He knew he was a shadow of his former self—at least, the former self that she'd last known him as—and a large part of him felt ashamed and embarrassed at the way he looked and must seem to her. He knew by the way his ribs showed along his sides, and how slender his hands and wrists appeared, and the bony, almost bulbous look his knees had, that his prolonged and rarely satisfied hunger had taken a toll on his once muscular body. "What?"

"You had to have known it was me," she said simply as she stared at him with a gentle look in her eyes. "I knew it was you almost instantly. Long before I saw your face. So, that tells me that I have to think that...you knew it was me."

He felt a strange surge inside of him, a flipping sensation in his gut. "Yes," he said, his Gaeltacht brogue clinging only to the edges of his speech at this point. He thought back to how, just an hour before, when he'd heard her footsteps approach from a distance through the darkness, he'd recognized their familiar cadence. As she'd approached, his nostrils flared as his keen nose picked up her scent, a scent he'd thought of thousands of times over the years but was certain he'd never inhale again, lest of all the way she smelled when her scent was tinged in expectation of him. As her footsteps had moved closer and closer, the heels of her boots grinding on the pavement, he'd heard it—the sound of her heartbeat—and his chest, bereft of his own heartbeat, filled with warmth and a strange feeling he hadn't felt or dared to feel in a hundred and fifty years: hope. That warmth that filled his chest in the moments he first felt her nearness had not left him. He looked up at her and said quietly, "I knew. I did. I knew it was you."

"And, yet, knowing that, you still ran from me," she said, her blue eyes alight with a burning want to understand him...to understand everything in that moment. "Why? Why would you have done that? I don't understand. Why would you run from me? Why_—_did you not want to see me? I-I...did I do something to make you unhappy with me? You had to have known that I'd catch up with you eventually."

"Yes," he admitted, the corners of his lips turned down in a frown. "It's not you, Brennan. It's not_—_I wasn't running from you because I didn't want to see you. I'm not unhappy with you. No, I'm...I've wanted to see you for years. I-I just...well..." His voice trailed off as he struggled to pull together his thoughts. "It's not that at all. Not at all..." Angel shook his head, turning away and staring for a moment at the bright royal blue tiles along the wall to his right, his eyes following the grid-like pattern of the bright white grout, which reminded him of the layout of the city whose streets he'd been wandering for longer than he would have wanted to admit. "It's just...well...it's not that I didn't want to see you. It's...it's that I didn't want you to see _me_." He raised the tumbler of blood, then sighed and let it rest again on the edge of the tub. "I didn't think you'd...I wasn't sure you'd like what or who I'd become," he said glumly. "And I didn't want you to see me this way."

She paused for a moment as she reached out and let her fingers intertwine in his lanky hair. Sighing, she said, "I can tell that the picture that I've had of things about you in my mind the past few years has been somewhat...skewed in light of what just looking at you tonight tells me. And, I'm sorry for that. I'll admit that I've been fairly distracted in recent years with my own research and doings to have checked more closely than I did. I should've...I shouldn't have taken things at face value. I should've come and checked on you long before now when you just dropped off the face of the earth. I should've been more proactive when you didn't...like we agreed...when we didn't see one another for so long. Because, you always came to me. Eventually...always. You always found me. But, you didn't, and I should've known that something wasn't right. I admit that. I should've done that, but I didn't, and I'm sorry. So, very, _very _sorry." She paused as she looked at the vampire for a long moment. Her voice again changed, softening again, as some of the vulnerability that she usually kept hidden from the entire world crept into her voice. "But, what I don't understand is that if things have become this bad, and it's as you said_—_that I didn't do anything to make you angry or disappointed with me, then why didn't you come to me? Why didn't you trust me enough to let me know what had happened and and let me help you? Why didn't you tell me what had happened so that I could know that I needed to help you?"

He turned to look at her, his sad, warm brown eyes framed by heavy, dark circles that made his cheekbones seem even sharper and more prominent than they actually were. "It's not..." he began. "It's...it's not the kind of thing you could have helped me with, Brennan. What happened to me? It's just_—_I can't be helped. I'm so far beyond help it's not even funny. I-I just...this is something that I have to deal with by myself. There's nothing you can do. Me...I-I...that is, alone. I have to do this alone, by myself. It's not the sort of thing that anyone can help me with, least of all you. It's just not that kind of..." His voice trailed off sadly as his sloping jowls twitched before he sighed, "I'm beyond helping."

Letting her hand fall away from his hair, she brought the back of her hand to gently caress his cheek. "No, you're wrong."

"Bren_—_" he tried to tell her.

"No," she repeated stubbornly, cutting him off. "Sixty years is no small thing for me...especially considering the fact that I don't have that many people that I think I can legitimately call a friend. Now—" she stopped and licked her lips for a moment before she sighed. "You're wrong," she eventually told him. "If you were hurt...in trouble...if you needed help, you could've come to me, and I would've helped you. I'm sorry...again, that is, if you didn't know that. But, it's true. As a matter of fact—" she stopped and brightened slightly as she said, "It would've been rather novel for me to be able to be in the position to help you, especially given the talent you've displayed over the years for getting yourself out of the messes you've made always made...well, it's just that the chance to offer some type of helpful assistance to you outside of my bed is a rather novel concept. But...I couldn't do that...and I still can't_—_that is, if you think you can simply outrun me or hide from me, especially now that I know of this...situation."

"Brennan," he said grimly, holding the glass of blood against his thigh as he felt, between the blood he'd drank and the words she'd said, somewhat, somehow, vaguely energized. "I don't think you understand what's happened to me. And, well, as powerful as you are, I seriously doubt that there's anything that you can do to help me. I'm not even sure I want to be helped, to be honest. It's...look, okay? You wouldn't understand..."

"Hmmmm," she said as she looked at him for a long moment and considered his words. She didn't look away, but they each held the other one in an intense stare. After another moment, Brennan let her hand fall away from his head and leaned in, breathing warmly near the crook of his neck. She inhaled deeply, drinking in the scent of him, closing her eyes as she did so. She then leaned back and said, "To start, by the smell of it, I'd say that the most noticeable thing that's changed since the last time I saw you is that you've been touched in some way by someone who has some not too undistinguished supernatural skills. By the way it's lingering on you, I'd say it's something to do with the tint of the Romani magic that cloys about you. Perhaps..."

She made a face as she tried to identify what her magical senses told her was different about the vampire. She struggled for a couple of minutes, and then shook her head as she told him, "I've been a bit distracted in recent years since I've been focusing more on things of an archaeological than mystical nature...but if I had to guess...I'd say it was a something to do with Romani magic of either the...the Lăutari clan of the Rom peoples...or perhaps...hmmm, maybe the Kale peoples. Say...now, I wouldn't put any money on it, but the taint distinctly reminds me of maybe..the Kalderash clan?"

Angel's face blanched at the reference to the Romani clan. However, a look of impressed surprise soon replaced it as he stared at Brennan for a minute before he nodded his head at her slowly. "Yes," he answered quietly. "It was the Kalderash. But...how did you even know that?"

She gave him a sly smile_—_somewhat pleased that she could still surprise him after all the time that they'd known one another_—_before she explained, "Although you may think that most of my magicks were limited to those that could hold or restrain you in some way, outside of the very enjoyable times we spent in bed together, I did have to find ways to make the hours go by, Angelus. Believe it or not, I'm what most people in the know would describe as a fairly skilled practitioner of the supernatural and the occult." She paused and then added with a small shrug, "You just never...well, you just never seemed interested in that part of my life, so I never talked about it. But, you don't get to be as old as I am, having struck as many deals as I have, without coming to know what's what among the different types of magicks that exist in this world...and a few others, now that I think about it."

"Right," he said, raising his cut-crystal glass and draining the last of the blood. He looked up at her with wide, expectant eyes. The initial glass of blood had at first seemed to have taken the edge off a bit, but he realized it did little to quell his ravenous hunger. In fact, it had only inflamed it. However, given his earlier vow not to seem too over eager, he knew he needed to wait a suitable amount of time before asking her for more. At last, he felt that he'd been patient long enough that he wouldn't seem like he was being too greedy to ask for more to drink. "So, ummm...is there any chance I can get a refill?" he asked, pouting his lips a little after he licked an errant drop of blood from the corner of his mouth.

Brennan studied him for a minute, slightly surprised to see a rather hopefully boyish look on his face as he looked up at her. At last, she smiled at him, and eventually, the first time since she had seen him on the streets, a smile cracked his face. "I'll make you a deal," she said taking the glass as he offered it to her. "What say you to washing that disgusting hair of yours with the bottle of shampoo there while I'm gone, and I'll go and see what I can do to conjure up a bit more of that for your dining pleasure?"

"Always a bargain with you," he grumbled in mock complaint. He then winked at her before nodding as he reached for the shampoo. "Deal." He leaned back, sliding his whole body into the water and submerged his head under the warm water before he watched her walk away.

She chuckled as she stood by and watched him dunk himself under the water. Satisfied that he'd be more clean when she returned than he was now, she took the glass with her as she walked out of the bathroom. A few minutes later, she returned and resumed her seat on the edge of the tub once she'd handed him the refilled glass. His slicked-back hair—and perhaps when combined with the glass of blood she'd conjured for him—made him look a little less worn and a little less haggard than he'd been just a short time before, and she smiled again as she handed him the glass.

"Here, Angelus," she said with a casual smile.

Angel's brow furrowed, knitting low and hard over his dark eyes as he winced at the name.

"What?" she asked, her body immediately tensing as she registered his body language. "What is it?"

"Please, don't call me that," he muttered. "I...look...it's just..." He shook his head and sighed sadly. "I don't go by Angelus anymore. Just call me...well, it's just Angel now."

Brennan blinked and quirked an eyebrow, then nodded. "Okay," she said. "If that's what you prefer. It, uhh, might take me a while, old habits and all, but I'll try to remember."

"Thanks," he said. "I'd appreciate that."

Reaching out, she leaned forward and brushed his stubbled jaw line as she said, "You know there are many things I can and can't do with these powers of mine. Removing the Kalderdash magicks isn't one of them, but if you're of a mind, I can help perhaps with a proper shave and haircut...unless, you've decided to grow a beard for some idiotic reason."

Angel rubbed his chin with the back of his hand and grimaced. "No," he said. "I've never been one for a beard. I mean I did try a mustache once somewhere at the end of George IV's reign, years before I met you, but it never quite looked right." He paused, wrinkled his brow as he thought of the memory, and smirked. "I was told I looked like a Prussian pouf, which wasn't the look I was going for. Some men can grow a good, proper beard that fills in, you know, in all the right places, but not me. It comes in quick, but never fills in, and I just look bad." He nodded and said, "I know I look like hell. I'm sorry." He took a long drink of the freshly-conjured blood and leaned back against the wall of the tub. He closed his eyes for a minute as he let himself the rare pleasure of enjoying the sensations of a full stomach and feeling of clean that were starting to penetrate his mind.

For her part, Brennan ached to help him. She hesitated for a minute, and then said, "Don't apologize. You don't have anything to be sorry about. At least, not to me you don't."

"I'm not too sure about that," Angel said as he blinked open his closed eyes. "But, that said, you're really offering to give me a haircut and shave?"

Brennan nodded. "You definitely need it, I think."

"So, this is the inner sanctum of Brennan's Arcane Magicks and Barber Shop, ehhh?" he chuckled when he saw her smile again. Tilting his head, he said quietly, a small bit of a teasing lilt entering his voice as he told her, "You're a woman of many talents, which I already knew. Though, I didn't know your talents extended to such a wide range of vocations."

"I thought you knew I was full of suprises," she chuckled.

"Indeed," he nodded at her. He then became serious again as the somber brooding that had colored his face returned. "Still, I don't know why you want to help me. I don't deserve it. I don't deserve you. I don't deserve anything."

She leveled her gaze at him, and then shook her head. "I already told you. That's not true. But, if you want another reason why, maybe I want to help you because I'd very much like to see that handsome smile of yours again instead of that sad melancholy frown that seems to have taken up a semi-permanent residence on your face. Isn't that reason enough for me to want to help you?"

The corners of Angel's lips curved up at hearing the veiled compliment. "You really think I'm handsome?" he asked. "I mean, still, after everything and all—?" He reached up and tucked a wet lock of his dark hair behind his ear in a gesture that spoke volumes about his insecurity. "I figured that you'd be appalled at...you know...what I'd become."

She leveled a stare at him with narrowed eyes as she listened to him castigate himself once more. She shook her head, almost as if to say of course he'd always been attractive to her...and more. She then tilted her head and kneaded her lip between her teeth as she watched him, "You know," she said. "Initially, I'd planned to let you have some time to soak and relax by yourself...leaving you to your own devices as it were. But, with all this self-deprecating talk of yours, I'm beginning to think that you being left alone is the last thing you need."

Angel sighed in exasperation even as he admired her tenacity at the same time he felt her challenge the isolated brooding that he'd come to embrace since having been ensouled. "I've been alone, more or less, for the last twenty-five years," he said sadly, staring once more into his tumbler as he swirled the blood around, watching it cling to the walls of the glass and noting how it slowly ran back towards the bottom of the glass. "Pretty much the whole time, except for a few months around the turn of the century and, well, during the Great War, when I did a stint in the Royal Engineers. Otherwise, well..." His voice trailed off. "Like I said, I tend to go alone these days. And it's for the better, really."

"Well," she nodded as she stood up and straightened her back. "That's all the more reason for me to dare to be different and break that sad, sorry cycle, huh? Because I'm quite certain I don't agree with your assessment. You've been alone too long, if you ask me, and so we're going to do something to change that, starting right now."

Angel raised his eyebrows with surprise, a bead of sweat rolling off his forehead and along the ridge of his brow before he wiped it away with his hand. He swallowed and watched her as she moved, then said quietly, with a certain caution on the edge of his voice, "Umm, okay."

Turning around, Brennan walked to the bathroom counter where a number of cosmetics, brushes, and other feminine accoutrements were arrayed. Carefully, she gathered up her shoulder-length hair in one hand and reached for one black lacquered chopstick with her other hand. Twisting it into a knot, she repeated the process with a second one in rapid succession. In less than a minute, her auburn hair was securely tucked up on her head. Turning around, she began to unbelt the knot on her black silk robe.

Angel's eyes widened as the robe fell away, and he felt what he hadn't felt in years—a raw tingling at the base of his spine that signaled that he was aroused by the sight of her—as he slid his bottom forward in the tub. He held his breath in anticipation as she took a step towards the tub.

Gesturing at him, she ordered him, "Scoot forward."

"Umm, well...uh," he stuttered, transfixed by the sight of her nude form. He felt his mouth get dry as he stared at her. "I, uh..." His fingertips tingled as his eyes traced over the curve of her hip and the pebbly texture of her rosy nipples. He felt a strange swirl of want and anxiety in his belly as he thought about how long it had been since he'd been with a woman of any sort, nevermind a woman with the appetites and skills that he knew Brennan possessed. He briefly remembered a young redhead from Liverpool who'd climbed into his bunk in steerage on the night before he arrived at Ellis Island and how he'd drowned himself in the feel of her that night. Since then, he could think of only one or two brief encounters. For the most part, he'd spent his nights and days in the shadows, alone, dreaming of what it would be like to feel her silky, ivory skin, damp with sweat and clinging to his as he buried himself inside of her. He felt a hard tugging sensation in his gut as he wondered what it would be like to be inside of her again.

"What are you doing?" he rasped.

Carefully, so she that didn't fall, Brennan maneuvered herself so that she stepped into the tub and then slowly lowered herself into the warm water as she slid in behind him. Opening her legs so that they came nestled around his hips, she noticed the tub water was quite pleasant and not nearly as cold as she thought it would be. Taking a deep breath, she breathed in the mild aroma of calming lavender that greeted her senses. She'd prepared the water before he'd gotten in the tub with several spoonfuls of the bath crystals she used to soften the water on days when she wanted to soak her sore and aching muscles. The subtle lavender scent was pleasing to her nostrils without being too overpowering. Once she'd settled herself to her satisfaction, Brennan leaned back against the curve of the tub and let her hands rest lightly along its rim. For his part, Angel's body was still tense and hadn't moved an inch since she'd slipped into the tub behind him. Brennan watched his ramrod back remain perfectly still and couldn't help but smile. She knew it couldn't be the fact that they were naked—since he'd seen her in such a state and even more intimate situations than a sitting in a simple bathtub over the years—and could only assume that he was either nervous or embarrassed about how he looked to her.

Hoping to put him at ease, she wanted to deflect his mind from what he thought might be her perceptions of him to his perception of hers. Chuckling, she moved slightly so that she was pressing her chest up against the broad expanse of his back and said softly, "You can blink now."

Angel let loose a breath with a laugh. "Sorry," he murmured. "It's just...it feels like...I dunno." He shook his head and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. "You would probably think I'm daft if I told you."

"I've thought you were crazy before," she shrugged. "That's never stopped you from flapping your lips then, so I don't see why now should be any different. You know I value the truth, Angel. Say what you want to say."

He leaned forward a little, breaking the contact between her breasts and his back, and shook his head again. Angel waited for almost a minute, and despite Brennan's prior efforts to the ensure contrary, he refused to remain distracted from his earlier brooding mindset. "You know, I can't understand how you can stand to be near me," he said quietly. "I'm cursed," he said quietly. "Damned, really."

Not one to let him get away from her, she scooted forward and quickly pressed herself against his back again. Resting her chin on his shoulder, she said simply, "I know that, and I don't really care."

He turned his head, his forehead crinkling in confusion. "You know?" he asked. "But...how?"

"I know you," she explained. "I would know you in any time or place, any shape or form. I knew something was different about you the moment I saw you in the alley and you took my hand. It took me about ten minutes, as we walked back to my apartment, for me to determine what was different about you. I could still sense the taint of magic on you—one that wasn't my own and that someone else had put there. I started to think about it as I transfigured the blood and brought it to you. I wasn't one hundred percent certain who was responsible for it until you told me though."

"So you know then?" he asked. "You can tell? The stink of humanity that clings about me? The conscience that won't quiet in my head? The welling of deep guilt that bubbles inside of me? All of that...all of that is due to the work of that magic that you sensed. Those Gypsies...they damned me with a soul. It was my punishment, you see...their curse. And, so now I'm the only vampire on this earth or in all the planes of hell that has a soul so that I can feel guilt and regret and sorrow at every life I've taken, every family I've ruined, every single bit of pain I've ever inflicted. That's why I'm damned, Brennan, and why I can't be helped. It's why you shouldn't care about me. I'm not worth it. I'm not. I'm a lost cause...and deserve that fate, and more, for all the evil I've done in this world."

She was silent for a moment and then said quietly, "Whether you like the fact or not, I know you, Angelus..." She caught herself as she said his old name, halted, frowned, and then shrugged her shoulder lightly. Correcting herself, she continued, "Angel, I mean..." Shaking her head, she drew a single breath before she told him, "No matter. Angelus, Angel. It doesn't matter what name I call you. All that matters is that you are you. And, I know you very, very well...and, well—it wasn't all that hard smelling the stink of the Gypsy magicks on you as soon as I sensed you. But, I don't see why that's any reason why you should run from me or why you think it should be something that should make me want to avoid you or have no desire to keep your company so as to cause me to avoid you."

She paused and then said, "We're all damned and cursed in some way, sweetness. So, I suppose, in that, I should be welcoming you to the club...if you didn't know that you were already in it long before now. But, since the very first night I brought you into my home, there was never any fear or anything else that made me want to stay away from you. I came to you, remember? It was I who sought you out because I wanted you. I wanted your company, I wanted to be around you. And, once I was...well, I only confirmed what my instinct had already told me about you. You...no one has ever quite come into my life and affected me like you have, Angel. We come and go. Some things change, and some things stay the same. But, through it all, my want of you and my lack of fear of you has remained consistent, sweetness. So, that being said, I don't know why you think now would be any different."

Something in the way she said 'sweetness,' and something in the softness of her voice relaxed him, causing some of the tension that had clung to his shoulders and back even after soaking in the hot water to finally loosen and melt away. He leaned back against her gently, a faint smile warming his expression as he felt her nipples against his back, and he sighed. "You know, for many, many years, I'd talked myself into the fact that I knew you so well that I was so sure, Brennan," he said, "that if you knew I had a soul, and that the man I was—Angelus, the Scourge of Europe—was no more, that you'd have no more use for me...no more want of me."

He shook his head then craned it back as he took a deep breath to inhale the smell of her, which had become more powerful as she'd sidled up behind him, perspiring slightly in the warm bath. "The man I was before, the one you wanted badly enough to have your hired boys jump me in an alley in Covent Garden that one night sixty-odd years ago—he's gone. The things he said and did, the way he'd do things without a care in the world—that's gone, all of it."

He sighed and crossed his arms over his knees as he felt the warmth of her touch permeate his cool, olive skin.

"I'm not him," he continued. "And I thought that _he _was who you wanted, and so he being gone, your want of me would, similarly, be gone. That's why...that's honestly...well, to put it simply, that's why I stayed away from you. I didn't want to have to endure the pain of you having to reject me since I've become something...someone so different than what or who you used to know."

She was silent for a moment and then said, "Think carefully before you answer this question I have for you, hmmm?"

"Alright," he nodded.

"In all our time together, did we ever do anything besides enjoy one another's company?" she asked him. "Did we ever make unreasonable demands of each other that went beyond the fact that you were a man and I was a woman? What we shared...did I ever ask of you anything beyond what we shared in my bed?"

He blinked, then raised his chin to answer. "No," he said. "You didn't." Angel thought of all the nights and days he spent in her bed, exploring every inch of her body and letting her do the same with his, and how they'd come together in every possible way a man and a woman could come together. He'd learned a hundred ways to make her scream, and she'd reduced him to a sweaty mass of rolling movement, low grunts, and rough growls, and no matter how thoroughly she satisfied him each time, he'd found himself unable to resist coming back for more. There was a beautiful simplicity to what they'd had back then, he thought with a smile. Brennan shifted a little behind him, the hard points of her nipples dragging across his back, and he remembered the one time she threw him out of her abode. "Well, I mean, you asked that I not come to your bed reeking of other women, but assuming all that basically is part and parcel of you taking me into your bed...I guess, no."

She chuckled as she considered his answer. "I had no need of what you did and who you were beyond the fact that you were a male who found me sexually arousing and wanted to be with me. And, I think, in a way, the same was true of you for me. Who and what you were...what you did and .however that's changed? Well, Angel...none of that matters to me. Assuming, of course, that you still feel the same way about me as you did then. That is, that you still find me attractive and might feel some want towards me...that's all that matters."

Angel's eyes glanced down at the arousal rising between his legs and laughed. "You can probably discern that for yourself, Bren," he said with a grin, "if you did just the smallest bit of looking."

She cocked an eyebrow at him, even though he couldn't see it with his back still turned to her as it was, as she considered what was his second use of such a shortening of her name that she'd noticed. Unable to help herself, she asked, "Bren?"

He shrugged slightly and then said, "It seems to suit you."

"You're brogue's faded," she observed with a slight smile. "So, I suppose calling me 'lass' doesn't sound as the same as it once did any more than 'sweetness' does coming out of my mouth now that I've just about given up my accent as well."

"Well," he snickered. "When I got to Ellis Island in 1902, I figured out pretty quick that the last thing I needed was to be seen as another dumb mick just off the boat, you know? So, I made a point to try and set aside my Fenian vocabulary for more American-sounding ones, and to try and lose the accent. I still pull it out from time to time. You know, when I go to the pubs and have a wee dram on Saint Patrick's Day, just for old time's sake. I can't taste the whiskey or beer, but I like going through the motions." He stopped and then shook his head as he said, "Also, I play up the old brogue when I find myself accosted by the cops, you know, since half the damn cops in Chicago are Fenians like me and they're more likely to cut a derelict like me a break if they think I'm just an unlucky lad from the coast of Connacht just trying to get by." He laughed and scratched his scruffy jaw. "But, yeah, you're right. After all this time, I almost sound like an American. Frightening thought, isn't it?"

"Yes," she nodded. "I suppose that you're no more Irish than I am English these days. We left the Old World behind, Angel—at least as much as creatures like us can ever let go of the past. For now, we're of the New World. So, it _is _fitting that we have these new identities we've crafted for ourselves. New haircuts, new fashions, new accents...new futures. It's not like I haven't done it before, and I have no doubt that I'll do it again...this constant refashioning that the onus of immortality demands of one so encumbered." She let out a wistful sigh before she smiled against his shoulder. "I suppose that's the wordy way for me to say that I suppose if 'Bren' is the closest I can get to 'lass'...I'll take it," she nodded. "I'll get used to it, eventually, if I must. That's just the way it is. It'll have to do."

"But, Bren," he said. "Wait—you _want _me to call you 'lass'?" He tilted his head to look at her, his eyebrows raised in surprise.

"I _have _grown used to it," she conceded with a slightly wistful look crossing her face. "Of course, it's just because it's habit and all—nothing more."

"Oh? Is that so?" he said with a slight smile growing even as she tried to downplay her disappointment. After a minute, he chuckled, "Well, perhaps...maybe, that is...if you'd like me to I'll consider it. Maybe it might still cross my lips from time to time. You know, especially...maybe in bed, if the feelin's right, aye?" He winked at her, and then said, "Though I must say I like the sound of 'Bren,' you know. It's as you said. A New World, a new self for each of us."

He paused, letting his train of thought fall away before he said in a more somber voice, "Bren?"

"Yes, Angel?" she responded to his query.

"I'm curious," he said, his voice suddenly quiet and hesitant again. However, after a moment, he continued, "Earlier? I'm just wondering if...well, are you...are you saying all this, the kindnesses you've shown to me tonight, are just because you want me back in your bed after all these years? Or..." Again, he hesitated as he felt her warm, liquid heartbeat, her carotid pulse, throbbing against his shoulder. He remembered how, for years, he could hear that rhythm, the unique rhythm and feel of her heartbeat, in the recesses of his mind, filling the silence carved out by his loneliness. He wondered if she had ever lain awake, staring at the billion stars in the dark canopy over the Sahara, thinking of him, in the years they had been apart. "Or..." He swallowed and closed his eyes. "Did you miss me, these years?"

She pulled away from where she'd been laying her head on his shoulder, and then moved her head to tilt it so that it was resting on his other side. A smile tugged at the side of her lips as she said, "The second question is easier to answer than the first. Of course, I missed you. How could I not? As to the first...well. I know you'd love it if I told you the answer to your question was yes. But, the truth of the answer is—I think we both know I'd be lying if I said you're the only man that's ever helped me scratch that particular type of itch in the time since last we've seen each other." She paused and then added with a cheeky smile, "Even if you did once so pompously claim that you were the only one who could ever help me scratch any such type of that particular itch that I might have in so effective and thorough a way..."

"Now wait just a minute," Angel said, tilting his head to look at her out of the corner of his eye but his efforts frustrated as she continued to press her chin against his back. Grunting in annoyance, he said, "My memory's long, but not foggy. I don't think that's what I said. I think what I said is that no man satisfied you the way I could. Not that no man could satisfy you, or that I was the only one who could." He fell silent for a moment pausing as he thought about what he'd just said and then laughed. "Heh," he added. "I _was _a cocky ass then, wasn't I? Damn."

"Ahhh," she snickered lightly as her mouth curved into another sly smile. "Yes, you were. And, it wasn't necessarily a bad thing...at least, not all the time. So, I'd say that some of that is still in you and no doubt might be teased out if we have enough time, but—" She stopped, some of the levity disappearing from her voice as she became more introspective. Pausing, she let out another breath before she said quietly, "To answer your question fully...well, the answer's no. There's more to it than that. There's definitely more to it than that. You've—" She paused as she considered her words and then sighed. "Now, now that I can actually see you...what's happened to you and how you've faired since last we parted company, I can see above all else that you've not been treated fairly. And, I don't mean by the Gypsies. You've not been treated fairly by those closest to you, and I hate it when I see that happening. It's a terrible betrayal. And, I can't stand that. Loyalty...and obligation...and trust? Well, you may or may not find this surprising, but those are things that have always rung loudly with me. And, when I see loyalty and obligation thrust aside in the name of shallowness and selfishness and mere...convenience—whether it's one's nature or not—that irks me. It irks me tremendously. So...I—" She stopped again, pausing for a few long moment before she said, "You know what...who I'm talking about, don't you?"

"Yes," he said, his jaw tensing as Darla's face flashed before his eyes, then relaxing again as he realized that Brennan, who'd known Darla since long before she'd made his acquaintance, recognized the source of his long-smoldering anger. Something flickered in his warm brown eyes and he said, "But don't say her name. Please...I don't want to hear it. I _can't _hear it. I'm only just now beginning to feel a little clean, you know, and if you say her name, I'll be soiled again. Please..."

Brennan felt a stab of pain at the angst she heard in his voice. She experienced a flash of indignant rage on his behalf, and although she wasn't quite certain how she'd address the inequity, knew she would do her best to right the wrong—both in the short-term with him there with her and in the long-term. "I won't," she said quietly, her voice barely more than a whisper. "I-I, I just...I'd have you know that I'm not her," she told him. "So, if for no other reason...that's the real answer to your question. That's why, as you said, I've extended these kindnesses to you."

"Thanks," he said, shifting his hips against the porcelain tub, leaning back and turning his head to the side so he could feel her breath on his cheek. "I-I...well...it..." His voice trailed off as he struggled for words as he felt himself awash in emotion. For several long seconds, almost a minute, he just sat there, looking at her with warm, open eyes and a soft smile, feeling the way her warm skin felt against his, the gentle touch of her fingertips on his side, and the way her silky thighs hugged his hips as if in an embrace. As he relished her touch, he felt as if some of the poison was being drawn out of him. The anger and pain that had resided in every bone and sinew of his body for nearly twenty-five years and had made him tense and hard, even in his sleep, seemed to soften somehow, as if the sharp edges of it were being worn away by her warmth. "I've missed you, Bren," he said, dipping his hand under the water to curl his fingers around hers and giving them a slight squeeze. "I really have. And...I'm—at the time, even though I didn't necessarily think it—I'm...well, I'm very glad you chased me down when I ran away from you. I'm very thankful that you knew better than I did." He stopped as a wry smile fell across his face. "Then, again, that's not really too surprising, is it? I don't think I would've admitted this before, but you've always been smarter than me." He smiled and winked. "Guess that's part of what I always found interesting about you. But..." His eyebrow arched as his dark eyes twinkled. "It's not the only thing..." He tugged at her hand and pushed it over his hip, causing her forearm to brush ever so lightly against his arousal and the coarse, curly hairs at its base before bringing her hand to rest over his navel, held there firmly by his own, larger hand. "You know, lass?"

She took his meaning what for what she hoped she'd understood him to be saying. Slowly, she closed the slight distance between their heads and pressed her lips to his. She waited to see what his response would be, and she didn't have to wait long for a reaction from him. He kissed her back, pressing his lips hard against hers as a faint growl sounded in his throat, and he drew the point of his tongue along the cleft between her soft lips. She opened her mouth slightly, a breathy chuckle escaping from her as she felt his tongue press hard against her lips as he demanded access to her mouth. Brennan parted her lips and purred as his tongue invaded her mouth, glancing against hers as he kissed her deeply, exploring the back of her teeth and the underside of her tongue. She smiled against his cold-chapped lips as she could taste the vaguely coppery flavor of the conjured blood on his tongue.

Although the angle of their bodies kept the kiss from becoming too frenzied, by the time she slowly pulled away, breathless and a demanding pulse already starting to hum between her legs, she couldn't help but smile a demure smile at him. "So," she asked him, a bit of playfulness coming into her voice as she gulped down some air. "With a kiss like that, I suppose I can be fairly confident in not having to worry about you disappearing the moment my back's turned then?"

"Hmmm," he murmured, still eager to taste her again, but once again determined not to become too desperate in expressing his desires as he now realized he wanted her more than he'd wanted to fill his belly with blood once again. "Let me think about it," he told her, a bit of her playfulness infecting him as he gave her a mock serious look. His dark brown eyes twinkled as he said, "You've fed me, given me a chance for the first proper bath I've had in—well, I'm not even going to tell you how long—and then offered to give me a shave and a haircut, to feed me again, and you have a place that's warm, well-lit, and out of the damn Chicago cold." He paused as he threaded the fingers of his left hand between hers and pressing her hand again to his belly before he added with a distracted sigh, "Never mind how good the way your body feels against mine." A flash—not just of desire but also of affection—lit up his eyes as he stared at her, his mouth gaping slightly as he watched her face. She gave him another wanton smile, and, amply encouraged by her response, he added, "So, all that being said, I think I'd be an absolute lunatic if I so much as _thought _about walking out that door."

"And, since we both know you're many things, but never a lunatic," Brennan chuckled. "That means?"

"I'm staying," he nodded at her with a firm look.

"You're certain?" she told him, her eyes glittering with interest. "Because I...I don't know why, but I have this very strong urge to keep you by me right now. I'm not certain why, but it's even more...well, it's even more compelling than how I usually feel when our paths cross, and for some reason—although, as I said, I can't explain it, I think it has more to do with the fact that it's just been so long a period of time since we last saw each other." She was quiet for a moment and then blinked at him. "You wouldn't happen to know why I feel that way tonight, do you?"

With a small shake of his head, he said, "No, I don't aside from you having missed my cheery, affable self." He paused and then said, "But just for the record, can I say how much I've missed that about you? I never know what I'm going to get with you, and I've always found that very, very enthralling." He shifted his hips in the tub slightly, unable to ignore the way his body had was responding to her. "Though I think at this point, you probably know what you're gonna be getting from me," he quipped. "I'm pretty predictable that way. That much hasn't changed at the very least." He noted the flicker in her eyes and grinned.

"But you know," Angel added with a grin. "When you do that thing that you like you did just now where you ask seemingly open-ended questions that I haven't a clue how to answer? Well, I'll let you in on a little secret. Whenever you've done that—even though you've probably been doing it to people since the reign of Elizabeth, if not longer—well, it makes me feel like an idiot."

Brennan didn't know whether to be slightly abashed or not since she couldn't tell if he was putting her on to tease her or not. "Really?" she questioned him.

Somewhat solemnly, Angel nodded. "You've been doing it to me...well, since forever. It just makes me feel foolish and dumb." He paused and then shrugged with a hint of playfulness, "That said, it's probably right I be put in my place from time to time."

Unable to help herself, Brennan laughed, "Well, that much is most definitely true. And, since we all know how much I love to be the one to put you in your place..."

"Do ya now, lass?" he asked with a laugh, letting his Galway accent edge into his speech once more, noticing that the more comfortable and at ease he felt around her, the easier it was to do so. "I'm pretty sure I know what place I want to be right about now. Mmm?"

Brennan couldn't help but laugh at his comment as she gave him a look that seemed to say they'd hit upon yet another thing that hadn't changed for either of them.

For a moment, Angel allowed himself to indulge in her rapidly increasing exuberant feelings of happiness. He then grew a bit more serious as his smile faded and he shook his head. "You know, Bren. To answer your question?"

"Yes?" she prompted him.

"Well...I know this isn't going to be very helpful, but I'm afraid I still don't have an answer for you," he told her. "I'm not sure why you'd feel that way. The way you do right now, about me leaving? I have no idea, really."

She considered his words, and then couldn't help but make a face. Shaking her head, she tried to figure out why he might be making her feel such a strange way. After another minute, when no answer was forthcoming, she sighed. "Hmmm...that's strange," she mused. "Interesting, but very strange."

"Heh," he chuckled, reaching out to use his index finger to draw a random pattern on her knee. "Isn't that how it's always been between us?"

Smiling, she again reached out and brushed her lips against his again. Pulling away before he could grasp her with his kiss, she said, "True. From the very first minute on that first night when I tied you up just to piss you off—which I found to be great fun, by the way, despite your aversion to the practice—we've always been very interesting, if somewhat strange in our amusements, haven't we?"

Angel grunted as she pulled away from his kiss then rolled his eyes and laughed. "You know, that's another thing that I've missed about you," he said.

"What?" she asked with an arched eyebrow.

"The poking," he told her. He narrowed his eyes and then grinned at her once more. "Always poking. Poke, poke, poke. But, I think you need to take pity on me since I'm only just now starting to feel pretty good right now. The best I've felt in...well, a long time." He paused before he tilted his head and gave her a soft pleading look. "Just so ya know, I know you've always liked teasing me, Bren. I daresay it's always been your second-favorite sport. Second only to...well..." He snickered and waggled his tongue suggestively, then gave her knee a playful squeeze. "So how's about you gimme a bit more time to reacclimate to your teasing, huh? You know, before you really lay into me, mmm?"

She smacked her lips and then laughed, "Oh, if I must. But...hmmm, you always get so cranky—soul or not, apparently—if you don't get to be the one doing the poking, hmmm?"

"You want me poking, eventually, right?" he laughed. "You like getting poked by me. At least, you always did before. You let me poke you for four days straight once, as I seem to recall." He twisted his hips a little as he felt a strong flash of want and his balls tightened at the memory of the first long weekend they spent together in her bed.

"And, is that your way of insinuating that you'd like to see if we can better that record now?" she asked him, punctuating her question with a low hum as she licked her lips.

A vague reticence suddenly washed over his face as he shrugged. "I'm not quite the physical specimen I was back then, to be honest." He felt her fingers rub over his slightly-protruding ribs and sighed quietly. "I've been living off the blood of rats, feral cats, and stray dogs for the last twenty-five years," he said. "If I'm lucky, and I wander my way out to the countryside, I lay into livestock now and again, which is a bit better, but still. I want you, Bren, so much...but...well, I'm not sure, Bren, that I can manage the kind of non-stop tumble we used to have back in London. But...if you're willing to be a bit patient with me, well..." His eyes glimmered as a crooked grin broke across his lips. "I'd be quite happy to give it my best shot tonight. And then, well...maybe you'll can nurse me back to health a bit more and then we can see about breaking our record streak then, ehhh?"

She tilted her head at him as she studied his deeply-set brown eyes, broad forehead, strong jaw, high cheekbones and pink, kissable lips—all those were the same, just as she remembered them. But hunger, and the decades spent living on the streets, under bridges and, when he could find them, in abandoned tenements, had marked his features, leaving his cheeks less full than they had been before, and his neck more sinewy and less thick than it had been when she'd seen him the last time. She could see his rugged, handsome features beneath the weeks' worth of scruffy beard that covered his jaw and cheeks, and she smiled faintly as she thought of how he might look without the mess of tangled locks that fell onto his shoulders. Nodding at him, she replied, "First, a haircut and a shave...and then we'll see where we go from there, hmmm?"

She paused, then her voice dropped and lowered, heavy with a seriousness that Angel immediately noted. Staring at him, she almost pleaded with him, "We'll take things one step at a time, Angel. It's just—"

"What, Bren?" he asked. "What is it?"

"Just...promise me," she said, her voice quiet as she answered. "I don't know why, but...you can't leave me, okay? Not—not without saying goodbye, okay? I want you to stay, for as long as you like, I do...just—you can't disappear on me, okay? If you stay...whether we fuck or not—and I'm not saying that we have to, even though I'm sure...that is, I know I would enjoy it—but we don't have to. Not if you don't want to...I just—you have to promise me that. No sudden, unexplained disappearances on your part back into the cold. Agreed?" She looked at him expectantly, her features suddenly drawn with vulnerability.

"Yes," he said, furrowing a puzzled brow as he squirmed his hips against her, his balls hitching at hearing her say the word 'fuck' in reference to him. "I mean, well—for one thing, I sure hope you'll take me into your bed tonight. I didn't want to suggest that I can't, well, go a few rounds with you. Just...I'm not sure I can pull off a four-day marathon at this point like we used to do. And, second, Bren—well, as you might've guessed, but...well...I-I...don't, that is, I really don't have anywhere else to to go. There's nowhere else that I want to be other than right here, right where I am now, okay? So, if you're worried about me taking off and...don't. Don't worry. I'm sure someone's already taken up residence over the warm street-grate I'd found for myself." He shrugged and looked away as a measure of shame flushed his cheeks. "I've got no one, Brennan. Nobody. And nowhere to go."

His words pierced her heart once again. Aching to comfort him, she wrapped her arms around the broad expanse of his shoulders and pulled him into a tight embrace. After a minute, she pulled away and shifted as much as she could so that they were looking at one another eye to eye. "Now, that's not exactly true," she corrected him as she kissed him lightly again. "You've got me...and you've got here to be. You know that, don't you? That I want you here, that you're welcome here...that well...you know what I'm trying to say, don't you?"

Angel again shifted his hips and turned to the side, bringing his hands up to cup Brennan's face. "Yes," he whispered, then kissed her, covering her mouth with his as he leaned into her warm, soft body and enjoyed what he could from her in a way that Brennan was only too happy to share.

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~**tbc**~

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**A/N2- **Okay, so there you have it. It was more than a month in the making, but we hope it was worth the weight. The good and bad news is that Part II and written and will be posting in approximately 8 hours. We hope that won't discourage people from letting us know what they think of this first piece. So, come on...put us out of our misery. Drop us a line...and stay tuned for Part II. It's coming shortly.~


	2. Part II: Backing Away from the Edge

**Comfort on the Edge of Reason**

**By:** Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

**Rated: **M

**Disclaimer: **Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from _Bones _or _Angel... _or anything else. Yes, we're wreaking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? ::blinks:: Good. Then, moving on―

**Summary: **Chicago. Halloween 1923. The witch Temperance Brennan encounters Angel for the first time since he'd been ensouled. Bones/Angel crossover. Very, very AU. Sequel to "Toe to Toe," "Barging In" and "Making Him Beg."

**A/N: **Herein is Part 2, our afternoon offering on our so-called Day of Comfort. We hope you enjoyed this morning's AM repast. Without further adieu, when last we left Angel and Brennan, they had just enjoyed a bath, done a bit of soul searching, and had ended up accidentally kissing or something strange like that...

UNF ALERT: Loyal dharmasera readers shall be happy to know, the Unf Alert is specifically for this part of the scenario. If you are not of a consenting, legal age to read this stuff, please don't. Or, if you do, please (and we really mean this) don't tell us you're reading it. Thanks. For the rest of you, enjoy.~

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**Part II: Backing Away from the Edge**

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Brennan allowed herself to melt into his kiss for a very enjoyable moment before she pulled away from him.

"Mmmm," she breathed into his mouth. "Enough of that for now, or I'll end up with my delicate skin chafing by your excessive facial hair, hmmm?"

"You know," he said with a grin. "Though I'll confess that it's been a while—a very long while, actually—since I've sat in a barber's chair and gotten a proper shave, you'll have to admit that for me to let you take a straight razor to my face and neck is a tremendous expression of trust on my end." He flashed his eyebrows. "Just sayin'."

"If I wanted to cut your throat, don't you think I would've done it several times over by now?" she rolled her eyes at him. "I'm sure you recall my silver dagger?" She stared at him with a completely straight face.

"I was kidding, Brennan," he said, his brow furrowing a little as he wondered briefly the extent to which she was kidding. After a few moment, he shook his head as he sighed, "It was a joke. Sheesh—I thought I was the one with no sense of humor."

A sigh cracked her visage as she shook her head playfully. "Mmmmm, we're going to have to do something about your inability to handle my teasing well, I think, because this time I actually _was _playing with you." Raising her index finger, she used it to tap his shoulder as she clucked, "I'm surprised at you, Angel. Sixty plus years, and it's still a skill you've yet to refine."

"I think you should cut me some slack, woman," he said with a laugh. "I've spent the last twenty-odd years living in barns, gutters, abandoned homes and under bridges. You've been—wait, what _have_ you been doing?" Angel asked as he realized exactly how much time had actually passed since he'd seen her in Cairo. Frowning slightly, his tone became more serious as he said, "I'm sorry, I haven't be able to keep up on my correspondence the way I used to."

"You never wrote anyway," she reminded him with a raised eyebrow, hoping that if she maintained a light tone, it might encourage him to do the same.

"Meh," he grumbled. "That's true. I was always too much of a lazy layabout to take a pen to paper. But now, they have typewriters, and if I had one of those, I might..." He stopped as Brennan continued to stare at him. His resolve crumbling, he said, "Well...probably not, right?"

"No," she laughed at him. "Definitely not. It's as you've always been, as you are, and probably will always be. And, I adore that about you." He grinned, his eyes twinkling at the compliment. She stopped and smiled. She reached out and lifted a lock of his long and now moderately damp hair in her hand as she said, "But, now, I think it's as good a time as any to see how well I can still cut hair, hmmm?

He looked at her for a minute and then asked, "I don't suppose we'll be doing that here?" He pouted his lips a little at the thought of getting out of the tub and no longer feeling her body wrapped so snugly around his. "'Cause this is kind of nice, you know. Sitting here like this, with you, here."

Chuckling again, she shook her head. "I mean, I think I can probably give you a decent shave here—though of course, _I'll _have to get out of the tub to do that—but to cut your hair and not make too much of a mess, well...no, we'll do one here and then one outside the tub, hmmm?"

Shifting her legs, which had started to fall asleep as they'd talked and soaked, she squirmed a bit to get enough room to maneuver to stand up. She felt tell tale pink pricks in her numb feet as she stood on wobbly legs. Once she was upright, she carefully got out of the tub and could feel Angel's eyes on her naked wet backside as she moved.

Angel watched her with wide eyes as she stepped out of the tub, the bathwater dripping off of her as she shook out her legs and arms to get feeling back in them. He blinked as he saw the flesh of her bottom shake, tiny droplets of water falling to the floor as they dribbled off the long, gentle curve on the underside of her ass. He felt himself harden further as she turned slightly and bent over slightly as she looked for where she'd put the towels. He saw her full breasts sway gently, her nipples erect as he imagined she'd felt a chill. He felt torn between sitting where he was and climbing out of the tub to feel those wet curves with his own hands. Angel imagined pressing her up against the edge of her bathroom vanity and taking her right there, hard and fast. He closed his eyes and rolled his shoulders as he shook off the raw tingle that surged from the base of his spine at the sight and smell and sound of her.

Laughing again, she said, "I can feel you, you know?"

"I haven't moved a muscle," he immediately replied, a suspicious defensiveness in his voice as he knew he'd been busted. "I swear," he said, glancing down and seeing that he was fully aroused, as hard as he'd been in years. He cleared his throat as he felt his balls begin to ache with want.

Turning around as she grabbed for one of the towels, she carefully shook out the thick and absorbent material and began to pat herself dry even as she felt him watching her every move. Arching an eyebrow as she looked over at him, she said, "I think the eyes have muscle ligature that count to discredit that statement since you've been watching every move I made since I got out of the tub...to say nothing of the other parts of your rather impressive male anatomy."

Angel's eyes darkened, and he shot her a crooked grin at hearing her reference to his cock, then winced slightly as he felt himself harden even more at the compliment. He brought his hand around between his legs and adjusted himself, then let his hand fall away again as he felt maddeningly torn between relieving the pressure in his aching balls and saving himself so he could make the most of his turn with her when the time came to join her in her bed for the first time in nearly twenty-five years.

She stopped and then reassured him, "It's okay. You can look all you want." Her lips twitched as she stared at his expectant gaze and then added cheekily, "So long as the looking connects with some type of doing a little later, hmmm?" Tossing the towel onto the floor, she grabbed her robe and hastily shrugged back into it. Her eyes then focused on her bathroom counter, and as she scanned it, she frowned when she realized that what she wanted wasn't there.

Walking towards the tub, she called over her shoulder as she walked out the door, "I need to grab something from my vanity in the other room...and gather a few other...supplies. Why don't you finish your drink and stay right there. I'll be right back." She paused only long enough to wink at him before she vanished outside the door.

Angel watched her retreating form as she disappeared from view, then reached down to pick up his half-drunk glass of conjured blood. He raised the glass to his lips and noted how the bathroom light sparkled and fractured against the facets of the lead crystal tumbler. Taking a long sip of the blood, he puzzled at how drastically his life had changed in the short span of a couple of hours.

_Three hours ago, I was wondering how long it would take to for my frostbitten fingers to heal assuming the cold front passed through tomorrow, _he thought. _Then I heard her, and smelled her, and I was sure that she would turn away from me the moment she saw my face. _He glanced around the bathroom, then took another sip, draining the last of the blood in the glass before setting it back down on the tile floor. _But she didn't turn away. She took me in. _Angel shook his head, then cupped his hands together and splashed the lukewarm water on his face, rubbing his palms against his scruffy jaws before raking his hands through his hair. _She wants me still, _he told himself. _I don't understand why, but she does. I want her, too. Differently than he did—the man I was before—because now I feel...what is it? Some kind of affinity, I guess—an affection for her. Angelus—hell, he just wanted her, to fuck her, to be amused by her wit and to play with her. I haven't felt this way in...I don't know how long. Maybe never? _He scratched his chin and shrugged, splashing another handful of water on his chest as he watched, waiting for her to appear again. _I don't know what exactly this is, or why it's happening, but I do know that I don't want it to stop. So...whatever she wants from me. It's hers, I think. I just—_

Angel was shaken from his thoughts by the sound of clanking coming from her kitchen. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hand and sighed, trying to turn the spigot that controlled the gush of thoughts that had been flooding his mind since he'd first laid eyes on her just an hour before.

_Come on, _he told himself. _You've spent the last twenty-odd years in your own head, alone with your thoughts. Finally, you're back in the company of a proper woman. _He nodded to himself. _The one woman you've spent the last twenty-odd years thinking about. Don't mess this up. Don't overthink it. Just take it as it comes. Whatever this is, and however long it lasts—enjoy it for what you can, for what it is_. He cracked his knuckles, leaned back in the tub, and waited patiently for her to return.

A few moments later, Brennan returned carrying a two-handled serving tray. On top of it sat a pewter bowl full of steaming menthol-scented water. Next to it, a small jar of shaving cream, a wooden-handled boar-bristle shaving brush, a straight razor, a tiny brown bottle with a cork stopper, and a pile of hand towels sat ready and waiting to be used. Angel watched with curiosity as Brennan moved towards the tub and carefully balanced the tray on its edge.

Cocking an eyebrow at her, he asked, "Do I even want to know where this stuff came from?" He watched in wide-eyed curiosity as she walked back to the bathroom counter, retrieved another towel, and rolled it up.

Handing it to him, she said, "Nope." Taking another minute, Brennan sat down, resuming her earlier position on the edge of the tub, once she'd believe the tray to be steady enough for her uses. "Probably not." She paused before she gave him a slight chuckle, "You can relax. I purchased most of this stuff from the shops I frequent on North Michigan Avenue. Chicago's finest shopping district in the Loop, you know?" She didn't wait for a response before she commented, "Now, I think the easiest thing to do is for you to lie back and maybe if you use that towel as a makeshift pillow, it might help you to relax, alright?"

She reached down and took one of the fluffy white hand towels from the stack. Gripping it in her hand, she quickly thrust it into the bowl of steaming water and let it soak, to Angel it seemed, for a very long time. At last, when she apparently seemed satisfied with the amount of time that she'd let the towel saturate, she squeezed out some of the excess green-tinted water and then gestured for him to lay back.

"Come on," she tempted him, her voice silky as she tried to coax him into doing her bidding. "Trust me. You'll enjoy it more if you relax. I promise."

"Huh," he grunted quietly as he cocked an eyebrow at her. "Why do I feel like I've heard that from you before?"

"Because," she nodded confidently. "You probably have...and you've always enjoyed it in the end, whether you wanted to admit it or not. So, shush now and stop fighting me, hmmm?"

His smirk faded, and he shot her a mildly annoyed look, his brow knitting hard over his eyes as he suddenly remembered how simultaneously arousing and irritating he used to find her bossy manner to be. After a moment, he slowly scooted over so that his back was braced against the curve of the tub. Angel took a minute to adjust the towel and then stared at her expectantly. For her part, Brennan waited only a few seconds before she took the hot towel and adjusted it on his face. He winced for a minute as the warmth of the towel penetrated his pores, the minty smell enveloping his nostrils to the point he had to make a face since the strong scent tickled his nose even more than her lavender-scented bath salts had done so earlier. Brennan chuckled as she watched his response, but said nothing. After a little while, she moved to take the rapidly-cooling towel off his face. Tossing the used towel on the floor, she turned back to the tray and reached for the dark brown bottle of shaving oil. She uncorked the stopper and covered the opening with her forefingers, turning it over and allowing a few drops of the oil to dribble onto her fingers. She set the bottle aside and then massaged the oil into his warm, mint-scented scruff.

He moaned quietly at feeling her fingertips press gently into his skin. She swiped the last half-droplet of oil in the shallow indentation under his lower lip, then grabbed the wooden handle of the boar-bristle brush firmly in her hand. Taking it, she dipped it in the bowl of warm shaving cream and slowly began to lather Angel's face. He closed his eyes as he felt the curious sensation of the bristles against his skin and eventually an audible sigh of pleasure escaped from his lips. Brennan smiled as she took in sight of her handiwork, making certain she'd covered his entire face with shaving cream.

Setting the brush back on the tray, she reached for the straight razor and hesitated only a minute as she waited for him to open his eyes. Once he did so in response to her pause in moving, she said quietly, "I've got a fairly steady hand, but it would help if you were as still as you can be...and don't make any...well, sudden movements are a good thing to avoid."

"Okay," he agreed. For some reason, he then felt the need to add, "You do know that I trust you, Bren, don't you?"

Nodding, once, she leaned forward as she opened the razor with an audible _flick _and used her fingers to pull his skin taut. She made her first pass with the razor in front of his left ear, making short, precise strokes and moving in a firm and consistent pattern until his sideburns were smooth and clean. Tilting her head, she focused her eyes on the architecture of his face—the angle of his high cheekbone, the way it cut high over the dark line that formed the edge of his beard, the curvature of his upper lip, the round of his chin, the pebbly texture of his acne-scarred jaw as it gave way to his neck's corded sinews, and the way his Adam's apple bulged in the middle of his neck—all the while holding the razor at shallow angle as she cleared away his dark brown stubble from his cheek, lip, jaw, chin and neck, stroke by careful stroke, as he lay there in complete silence, still as glass. A grin twisted her lips as she considered how, at least in this instance, his vampire nature made him an easier subject for a straight-razor shave, since he didn't actually breathe unless he was speaking. At last having finished the left side of his face, she wiped away the excess foam with her index finger and took a moment to admire her work.

"How does that feel?" she asked him as he opened his eyes and raised his hand to his cheek.

"Wow," he sighed. "That's nice." He chuckled as Brennan batted his hand away and brought the razor up again and turned his face with a gentle nudge of her index finger. "It feels...good."

"Yes," she said. "It does." They held each other's intense stares for a minute and then Brennan smiled a genuine smile at him. "I missed you, Angel," she said quietly as she drew the blade in front of his ear, scraping away his rough, ragged sideburn. "It's been a long time." She stilled her blade to allow him to reply.

"Yes," he said. "Almost twenty-five years." He opened his eyes and looked at her, his gaze meeting hers as their eyes locked for several seconds. "It was...well..." He hesitated, shifting his jaw from one side to the other and rolling his lips between his teeth as he struggled to give words to all of the roiling emotions he felt in that moment. "I thought about you all the time," he said. "The whole time—all those years, I thought of you, Bren. I just...I couldn't. With you, as I was, I just couldn't." He swallowed hard, finally tearing his gaze from hers as his he faltered in finding the words to express himself. "I'm sorry..."

"You know," she began, her voice softening as she spoke. "I spent the years wondering what had become of you. We had, I know, made no definitive commitment as to when we would see each other next. But, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't hoped..." She brought the razor to the edge of his cheekbone and made long, steady strokes as he struggled to remain still as she spoke. "I spent a number of years working in Egypt as I told you I'd planned to the last time we saw one another in London. The time passed so quickly in some ways. There were so many fascinating finds, so many incredible discoveries. However, year after year, as I continued my work in Egypt and commuted back and forth between Luxor and Cairo, I kept hoping you would come to me...that I might see you. You were never long or far out of my thoughts."

Angel felt his stomach flip at hearing her words. _I'm not the only one, _he thought. _It wasn't just me. She thought of me, too. _The faint ache he'd been feeling in his gut faded as a growing warmth spread through his chest. _She missed me. All those years, when I thought she had long forgotten about me, but she hadn't. She thought of me. I don't know how or why...but she actually missed me. _He blinked and swallowed again, but said nothing as she continued to speak.

"Then," she continued, "before I knew it, so much time had passed, and, by the time of the Great War, when the Turks came and invaded Egypt from the Sinai in January 1915, which campaign put an end to any archaeological pursuits in Egypt for a number of years, I'd started to think that perhaps I'd seen the last of you. I lost track of, well, our mutual acquaintance who might be able to answer any of my questions about you. The postal service between northern Africa and the Orient wasn't the best during peace, let alone in times of world war. I didn't know if something had happened to you...that perhaps you'd been staked or...maybe had grown tired of our...interaction, somehow."

"No," he said, his voice soft as he began to speak but growing firmer and louder as he continued. "That wasn't it, Bren—not at all. It wasn't that I didn't think about you or want for your company. Please, no—believe me, it wasn't that at all. It wasn't you. It was...it was because of _me, _Bren." He paused, his brown eyes seeming in that moment as warm as Brennan had ever seen them before, sparkling back at her as a rich, creamy chocolate color. "It wasn't that I didn't want to see you, Bren. I really did. I thought of you all the time. It's just that...I-I...well, you said you lost track of time yourself. Well, for different reasons, it was much the same for me. I just...I needed time. There was so much for me to face, so many memories and so many feelings. I needed time to make sense out of it all, and to try to figure out a way to cope with things, but I never quite...well, I haven't quite gotten to the coping part yet." He stopped, exhaled slowly, and then said, "But it was never you, Bren."

"Why didn't you come to me?" she asked, her voice low as she looked at him expectantly. "In Egypt?"

Angel tried not to tense his jaw as she continued to shave his skin. She stilled her blade once more, allowing him at last to answer, "I told you the truth. I didn't want you to have to see me, as I am now, and have to go through the effort of telling me to go away. I-I..." He hesitated for only the briefest of a moment before he continued. "I never made it to Egypt," Angel told her with a certain sadness. "I-I...after I got my soul back, I traveled a lot. I made it as far as Baghdad before I decided to go east and not south, but—" He looked over at her.

"Don't," she said softly, suddenly cutting him off. Her hand fell away from his jaw, holding the open, cream-smeared razor in her lap as she as she blinked at him. "Please don't."

"What?" he breathed.

"You're lying," she said flatly. "I'm not certain how or why I know...but at some point, Angel? At some point, I know you were in Egypt. And...and you were close enough to me that I could sense you. It wasn't anything...overt. Actually, it was quite faint. If I'd never given it a second thought before tonight, I probably would've brushed it off as just a figment of my imagination. But, I can...now. Tonight. Right now? I know you...I know you're not being completely honest. Are you, mmm?" She stared at him and then said, "At some point...you did come to Egypt, didn't you?"

He looked at her with shame hanging on his face and then finally nodded, "Yes."

"And, you saw me?" she pressed.

"Yes," he answered again in a raspy voice. "But, I'd spare you—"

"Don't," she pleaded with him again. "Please don't...don't try to protect me. Just be honest with me. Tell me...you walked away?" she asked, straining to understand him. "You left me...without saying a word? Why?"

"I-I...well, it's..." Angel hesitated, turning his head and averting his eyes as he blinked, remembering how he'd seen her sitting on the terrace that evening, and how every sinew in his body had wanted to reach out and touch her, but he'd held back, and after a minute or two, slinked back into the dark alley from which he'd come. "I was in a bad way," he explained. "I looked like hell...like I did tonight...but it was even worse, really. I was drowning, Bren. It'd been just a few months, and I was being inundated by the memories of all the things that I'd done before, the lives I'd taken, the families I'd destroyed, the women I'd..." His voice trailed off before he summoned up the strength to continue. "I just couldn't bear it, the guilt. It weighed on me so heavily, and I felt like I was suffocating. I..." He shook his head and shrugged. "I left Cairo without seeing you for the same reason I ran from you tonight. I didn't want you to see me this way. I didn't think you'd want me...the way I am. I saw you there, one night, after dusk, taking your tea on the terrace, but...I lost my nerve. I watched you for a while, and then I left. I couldn't stay there. I had to leave. I couldn't be that close to you and not have you. I couldn't face having you reject me like I was so certain you would have had you seen me."

"But, I _wouldn't _have done that," she told him, her voice soft yet insistent. "I wouldn't have rejected you."

"I know," he said, his voice edging slightly lower as he tried to reassure her. "I know that now."

"Do you?" she questioned him. "Do you really?"

"Yes," he confirmed, his eyes wide as he gave her a smile. "But, at the time, I didn't. I didn't have any faith...any ability to think that if the worst of something could happen to me that it wouldn't. So that time I saw you, I stayed for a while watching you. But then I went and never came back. I never went back to Egypt after that."

Brennan stared at him for a long moment, rolling the handle of the razor in her hand as she fought against the wave of emotions cresting inside of her. She pursed her lips, then asked quietly, "When was this?"

"I don't know," he said grimly. "Not long after I left Romania. A few months maybe. During the spring...when I knew you'd still be there."

"So, you _did _come to me?" she asked, a bit of hope creeping into her voice. "Really? You really did come to me then, as we'd agreed?"

He slowly nodded. "Yes," he whispered, his voice nearly inaudible.

For some reason, his response made Brennan's heavy heart feel suddenly much lighter. The sting of rejection that she'd harbored in her heart as she'd thought of Angelus over the years finally started to lessen a bit.

Nodding at him, she said, "I wish...I-I...I wish you would've trusted me enough to make your presence known. I mean, I understand why you didn't. After everything that had just happened...I realize...that is, I know it was a lot to confront. But, I would've helped you. I would've helped you then, as I hope you're going to let me do now."

"A part of me wishes that, too," he told her. Angel leaned his head back and sighed as he thought of the two women he'd shared most of his centuries-long life with and how very different they were. Each devastatingly beautiful and yet lethal in her own way, he'd known mind-shattering pleasure in both of their beds. But one of them had let him go, again and again, knowing that he might come back or that he might not, and wondering all the time even as she let him go. On the other hand, the other had left him behind, again and again, knowing each time that he might not survive the danger to which she'd abandoned him and not really caring about how he'd fared if it inconvenienced her. He lowered his gaze again and looked at her with eyes hazy with regret. "Especially," he said sadly. "Because...well..." He sighed again. "Bren, if I'd gone to you, I wonder if I might not have made one of the biggest mistakes of my life."

"What did you do?" she asked, her voice quiet as she looked at him with expectation.

"I left Egypt and went to China...to find...well, to find the crew," he said. "At the time, I was so desperate, I-I...I didn't know what else to do. I was just so tired of being alone and dirty and hungry and weak. So after a while, Bren, I finally gave in, and I went...you know...I went to find them. And I did. Eventually, I did find them, and it was a terrible mistake. I shouldn't have gone. But, I did, and it turned out...very badly."

Brennan searched his face for more of an explanation, but when she saw the pain in his eyes at the vague mention of China, she knew not to press further. Instead, she said, "You know, I think...because I sensed you there, in Cairo? I think that was one of the reasons why I kept going back there. Even after the war, I still spent several field seasons in the Valley of the Kings and at Giza. I was even there last year when Howard Carter's expedition found the tomb of a pharaoh named Tutankhamun from the Eighteenth Dynasty. It's...well, they're fairly certain it's the first completely intact royal tomb ever to have ever been discovered."

Somewhat distracted by her abrupt change in topic and the brightness in her voice, Angel couldn't help but to confess, "I saw some of the stories in the newspapers. It...it seems to have been an incredible find. Were you really there?"

"Yes," she told him. I mean, I didn't work on his team or anything. I was assisting on another dig site not too far away, across the river from Luxor at a place called Deir el-Medina. It's a fascinating site, the only village site that's ever been discovered. Bernard Bruyère is the director of the expedition there, and he believes the village to have been the place where workmen and artisans who labored on the tombs in the Valley of the Kings lived. Carter's discovery, of course...and rightly so, from a certain perspective, has dominated the coverage so it's been a few months since I've heard much about recent finds as I left in July. Not much work was being done since that's off-peak season in Egypt, but I got a couple of letters from friends saying the work has been made a bit more difficult in the wake of Carter's difficulties with the Egyptian authorities."

"You miss it?" Angel asked, sensing the excitement and disappointment waxing and waning interchangeably in her voice as she spoke of her work. He found himself unable to suppress a smile at seeing how she, too, had changed in the years they had been separated. She'd found a purpose, something to throw herself into that was outside of and greater than herself. And he could see how it filled her with a joy he'd never seen in her before. "Don't you?"

"A bit," she nodded with a faint smile. "I had to leave just as things were getting quite interesting regarding some finds that Bruyère believes might be textual finds." She shrugged, then added, "But, I've spent much more time in Chicago these past few years, and with the start of the academic year, I felt it prudent to return."

"You know," he began. "Now that I'm listening to you, and your well-read way of speaking seems to have evolved into something...well, I can't quite put my finger on it." He quirked his eyebrow and cocked his head to the side. "But, why are you in Chicago of all places?"

"While I love my work in Egypt," Brennan answered, "there are so many exciting places that are being excavated right now. I mean, right now? Well, it's a bit of an archaeological renaissance in a way. As I said, I've spent a fair bit of time in the dig sites up and down the Nile before I traveled to visit expeditions crossing the Arabian Peninsula, Turkey, Greece, and back to Egypt again. I settled here in Chicago about...well, when I had to leave Egypt when the war came. Europe seemed such a depressing place to be during the Great War, so I decided to come to America. Everything was new and there was this hopeful energy here, the expectation and promise of what's to come, you know? The future needn't be so dystopian here. I like that about America. It tends not to take itself as seriously as Europe does. So, I've stayed ever since, and I guess that was what...eight years ago? I spent a bit of time in New York and Boston, but I ended up here in Chicago about four years ago. The Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago promises to be one of the leading institutions for anthropological and archaeological studies that go beyond mere antiquities—"

Angel smiled as he heard a new thread of excitement again color her voice.

"What?" she asked, cutting herself off in mid-sentence as she noticed the subtle shift in his facial response. "What is it?"

"It's just that...well, outside of bed, I don't think I've ever seen you this excited about something before, Bren," he said, admiration clear in his voice. "It's...well, it's good. I'm glad...I'm happy that you seem to have found something that makes you so happy. It's great."

"I'm well suited to it," she said. "Although, recently, I've begun to have a bit more of an interest in the anthropological side of things than the archaeology. While the material culture is certainly fascinating, it's the bones—mummies and skeletons and such that are sometimes recovered at the sites—those are really the things that I'm drawn to for some reason. They're just so alluring, I can't explain it. I suppose that's why I keep spending so much time in Egypt, since the human remains preserve so well there. But, now, I've had a desire to maybe try my hand at traveling to Central America to visit a few Mesoamerican sites. There are a few articles I've read in antiquity journals that predict Mexico and Peru will be the next place where archeological expeditions become quite prolific...but, as interesting as this is to me, I'm sure you don't want to hear me drone on and on about it." She shrugged with an sheepish smile. "Sorry," she said. "Sometimes, I get on a roll about talking about my work, and I get a bit carried away."

"It's okay," he smiled at her. "I think I like it when you get carried away. It's...well, even though I've never seen this side to you before tonight, I think I like it. In fact, I'm certain I do. I like it very much."

She nodded once and then fell silent, lifting his chin with her finger as she reached for the shaving brush and bowl with the other hand. Brennan applied a generous dollop of cream, using the brush to even it out and work it in before she pulled the skin of his neck taught and began to work the razor again. She pursed her lips together firmly and narrowed her eyes with focus, and the only sound between them for a couple of minutes was the soft, _fwip, fwip _sound of the straight razor scraping along the skin of Angel's neck. After a few more minutes, she finished, and used the now-cooled, mint-scented towel to wipe away the last whisps of shaving cream from his face and neck.

"Mmmm, yes—that's much better," she said with a smile as Angel blinked open his eyes and palmed his now smooth jaw. "Do you feel better?"

"Mmmmm," he murmured. "Immensely so." He lolled his head to one side and watched as Brennan stood up again and removed the tray of shaving materials to the counter, then retrieved a clean towel, and held it against her chest as she waited for him to emerge from the bath.

"Do you plan to stay there all night, Angel?" she asked with a crooked grin. "Because, if you do, before you make that decision, I'd first like to suggest that I'm of the opinion that there's far more fun to be had outside of that tub than inside of it."

"Huh," he grunted, placing his hands on the edge of the tub and heaving himself up as the lukewarm water rolled off of his naked body in noisy sheets. He stood there in front of her, naked, dripping and wet, for several long moments as her eyes skated up and down the length of his body. "Towel?" he said with an awkward grin as he watched her hungry eyes devouring him. He felt a twitching, tugging sensation deep in his gut as he felt her gaze and saw her pale blue eyes flicker as he stood before her. "Or would you rather just watch me stand here, naked and wet? Which desire I can accommodate if that's your want..."

"Here," she said, stepping forward to hand him the requested item with a half-grin.

Angel accepted the folded towel, but immediately let it fall to the floor as he reached for her and and pulled her tightly against him. He cocked his head to one side as his lips hovered next to hers, and he felt her warm breath on his freshly-shaven upper lip, which still tingled from the touch of the razor and the minted water. She leaned close, pulling away slightly before moving in and pressing her lips to his. A soft moan rounded in his throat, and his lips quivered against hers for a few seconds before she let her tongue slide across the cleft between his lips, encouraging him to open his mouth to her kiss. His lips parted and her tongue slipped into his mouth, and within moments, their mouths grasped at one another, a shared murmur hummed between them as their tongues twirled and glanced off one another in the warm, moist space between them. Twenty-five years worth of want crackled between them in the couple of minutes they kissed, their hips grinding together in a clear sign that, regardless of the passage of time, the distance and the dramatic change in the circumstances between them, their bodies knew none of it. From that perspective, mercifully, everything was still _exactly _the same. Eventually, Brennan pulled away from Angel's fervent kiss, lingering long enough to suck gently on his lower lip before taking a step back and breaking away from his grasp.

"No," she said firmly. "There's one more thing we need to do before we can get to _that_." She smirked as he pouted his bee-stung lips and reached for her again, but she pushed his hand away with a soft laugh. "Did you forget that we still need to tend to that hair of yours? Temperance Brennan's Arcane Magicks and Barber Shop, remember? Full service and all?"

"Yeah," he rasped, his voice cracking at his unslaked want of her growing with each second that passed. "But are you sure we can't skip to the full service and come back for the haircut later?"

Brennan glanced down and saw the reason for Angel's husky tone of voice and sudden impatience. "Easy there, sweetness," she said with a teasing edge to her warm voice. "We have all night, and however many days thereafter to attend to all of our long-awaited desires." She felt a tingling in her fingertips at the sight of his hard-on, which seemed all the more arousing given that he was still, more or less, dripping wet, the water clinging to the fine brown curls that covered his legs and, obviously, the thicker brown curls between them. "But it's time to take care of those woefully outdated locks of yours, which have seen better days, and leave it behind with old Queen Victoria. We're going to bring that coiffure of yours into the twentieth century, I think." Seeing his face turn to a frown, she flashed an eyebrow. "Then, we can get back to the full-service portion of the offerings." He shot her a pleading look, and this time, she knew she wasn't playing fair as she asked, "Please? For me?"

Angel's eyebrows flew up and his forehead crinkled as he considered his options. After a brief moment, he shrugged and bent over to pick up his towel. Quickly drying off his chest and arms, he wrapped it around his waist, wincing slightly as the fabric brushed against his erection. Brennan smirked at noting his discomfort and disappeared into her bedroom, leaving him standing awkwardly in front of her mirror, gazing into it with a sigh. It'd been 170 years, more or less, since he'd seen his own face. His visage cast no reflection, whether in a fine mirror, a window, or a puddle of rainwater, and for a man who in his mortal days used to enjoy looking at his image, it had always left him feeling slightly unmoored. Angel wondered what he actually looked like now, after twenty-odd years of feeding, not on the human blood that had sustained him and been the source of his endless youth and strength since Darla had sired him in 1753, but on the blood of animals, most of them small mammals, gutter-dwelling castoffs of human cities—the vampire equivalent of very poor table scraps.

Angel was still standing there, staring at his non-existent reflection in the mirror, when Brennan walked back in with an old, threadbare bedsheet folded over her arm and a comb and pair of scissors in her other hand. His forehead creased in an expression of worry as he watched her set the comb and scissors down on the counter, nudge him out of the way, and place the half-folded bedsheet on the tile floor in front of the counter before walking back into the bedroom. She picked up her backless wrought-iron vanity chair and brought it into the bathroom, set it on top of the sheet, and gestured for him to sit down. He looked up at her with a wide-eyed, pouty-lipped puppy dog expression as he took his seat.

"Relax, Angel," she said, standing in front of him and leaning back against the counter as she threaded her fingers through his damp, shoulder-length hair. "I'm not going to hurt you. But, this hairstyle of yours has been out of fashion since at least the Napoleonic Wars, hmm? You have such handsome features, and it's a pity to hide them with with this..." She ran her fingers through his hair again and smiled. "Now, you trusted me enough to draw a lethally sharp blade over your jugular veins. Surely you trust me enough to cut your hair." She quirked an eyebrow as she began to untangle his hair with a boxwood comb. "It's not like you're going to venture out during the daylight hours to visit a proper barber shop," she added. "Or, I daresay, you would've done that long before now, hmmm?"

"My hair's just fine," he grumbled in mild complaint, more than a little annoyed at being told how to wear his hair and being even more annoyed because he knew she was right. "I was gonna do something about it, you know, but I, uhh—"

Brennan rolled her eyes as she reached for the scissors and, pulling a hank of his dark brown hair straight, swiftly cut it away. "I'm not shaving your whole head," she said with a soft chuckle. "You act as if I'm going to give you a tonsure. Don't worry. I won't." She pulled another strand taut and drew the scissors along the edge of the comb as the dark, wet hair fell onto the sheet that covered the floor. "Besides, since you can't see yourself in the mirror anyway, you'll just have to take my word for it, won't you? I promise, sweetness, that you'll look even more handsome than you already do when I'm done with you. I'm not claiming to be an expert barber, but I do know a little about fashion, okay? I won't lead you astray. So, as you did before, trust me, hmmm?"

Angel thumbed the smooth skin of his freshly-shaved chin and sighed in a final reluctant acceptance of her terms. "Okay," he agreed. "Just...don't make me look like an idiot, okay? I'm trusting you..." His voice trailed off into an unintelligible grumble.

"Good," she said with a firm nod as she continued to comb out his long hair.

She then lifted the scissors and began to cut, shortening his hair, hank by hank, until most of its length was gone. Then she proceeded to cut it even closer, cutting it to barely a quarter inch over his ears and around the back, but leaving more length on the top, knowing that he would be frustrated if he couldn't run his fingers through his hair as she'd observed was a nervous habit of his. Besides, more selfishly, she wanted to leave a bit of length on top so _she _would have something to thread her fingers through when she kissed him. The thought of having him near her again—finally, after so many years not knowing what had become of him, or whether he'd finally met his fate at the end of a wooden stake—filled her with a feeling of warmth and optimism that, frankly, she hadn't felt in a very, _very_ long time. She worked quickly, unable to suppress a grin as each _snip _seemed to reveal more and more of the sharp-hewn, rugged manliness of his features. It reminded her of pruning an overgrown rosebush—by cutting away the weaker and less sightly bits, the whole of the plant would be made stronger and allowed eventually to grow and thrive. At last, Brennan drew the comb through his hair, trying to pick up any stray bits she might have missed. Angel raised his eyes and met hers as she set the comb and scissors on counter with a loud clank. He slid the vanity chair back as he stood up, bringing his hands to rest on her hips as he leaned in close to her, his warm brown eyes darkening as his pupils pulsed in interest as he drank in the sight and smell of her.

"Better?" he asked with a smile, brushing his lips across hers before pulling away.

"Yes," she replied, her voice low and husky. "Very much so. Particularly, because you deserved a new look, I think. You're not the man you used to be, it's true. But, you're better now than who you used to be. Different, yes, but better, too. And, you deserve to look like the _you _you are now, if you know what I mean. Not the _you _you used to be."

Angel narrowed his eyes and blinked, silent for a moment as he considered her words, then nodded. "Do you like the _me _I am now?" he asked with a nervous swallow.

Brennan paused for a moment and then and then reached out to clasp one of his hands. Intertwining her slender fingers through his bony ones, she brought their joined hands to her cheek and then tilted her head until she could reach his hand with her lips. Pressing a light kiss to the part of his hand that was visible, she then rubbed her cheek against his hand in a light caress.

When she was done, she lowered their still interlaced fingers and said in a soft voice, "I've liked the man you were, I very much like the man you are, and I think I shall always like any man you will become in the future. Who you were doesn't matter so much as who and what you are to me when you're with me, Angel. I know it may be a very selfish and self-centered take on things, but it's how I've always felt...or, forced myself to feel about you, I suppose. All that matters is the here and now—the time that we can enjoy and spend in one another's company. What came before or what might come later...none of that matters for us. So, to answer your question, then, yes, I like the you you are right now...very much so."

He paused to consider her words and then said in a gravelly voice, "You're both a very confusing and very beguiling creature, lass."

"Mmmm," she said as she squeezed his hand as she pressed her body up against his. "Does that mean I've confused you too much to beguile you to follow me back into my bedroom?"

He answered her with a simple grin that let her know he'd follow her anywhere in that moment.

Brennan tugged his hand and led him into her bedroom, then turned to face him as they stood by the side of her four-poster cherry bed. The room was warm and inviting. The fire that she'd conjured in the wide fireplace on the wall opposite from where the large king-sized bed crackled quite cheerily. The various taper and pillar candles that she'd lit cast a golden hue over the entire room, and the faint smell of the vanilla-scented candles perfumed the air. The dark blue velvet duvet comforter was turned back to reveal cream-colored flannel sheets while small piles of plump white feather pillows sat stacked on either side of the bed. The picture was completed when Brennan gave a sharp flick of her wrist, a small ball of blue electricity flew to the opposite side of the room, and a heavy Roman shade was pulled over the window to shut out the howling winds, the building snow drifts, and the bitter cold that was so dangerous and could've have been dangerous to them both if it hadn't been for more than a slight bit of luck—or fate, depending on which one of them you'd asked—that had put them both in the same place at the same time so their paths could cross once more.

Angel blinked at the now covered window and was about to open his mouth to say something when Brennan reached over and curled her fingers beneath his chin so that she could gently guide his gaze back to meet hers.

"Eyes here, Angel," she said with a slight teasing in her voice. "Lest you want me to use a bit of my magic to have to get your attention again."

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, he frowned and said, "You're _not_ tying me up again."

"Then pay attention to me," she said, as she let her hands fall to his hips. She tugged at the towel that was wrapped loosely around his waist. "Pay attention to me so that I can pay attention to you, hmmm?" She let the damp towel fall to the ground with a muffled thud. Bringing his hands to her hips, she said in a rough voice, "Undress me."

"Gladly," he whispered as he felt her hands fall away, and he moved one hand off of one of her hips.

He reached for the large loop that she'd tied the belt of her robe into and slowly pulled the tie loose. He felt the silkiness of the black satin belt slide over his fingers, and when he pulled it free, he licked his lips as he saw the first glimpse of her creamy skin revealed before him. The robe hung loosely on her body, both concealing and revealing him to her in all her impressive female beauty. He heard her draw a sharp breath as his eyes skated over the ribbon of skin that was visible, the paleness of her body visible in a line from the top of her breastbone, down the curve that ran between the swell of her breasts, across the taut line of her stomach, and ending just above the apex of her mons, covered as it was in neatly trimmed auburn curls.

He couldn't help himself as his other hand moved from her hip and dipped inside the robe. He used his fingertips to reach for the short curls that had been trimmed into a different style than he'd been used to seeing when he glanced at the hair that crowned her wet folds. As he twirled his fingertips in the silky but coarse hair, he heard her suck in another deep breath.

Angel chuckled slightly as he said, "You've changed this since the last time we bedded."

"Yes," she said in a tight voice, constrained as it was with a rapidly increasing arousal that she felt at the mere flicker of his eyes and the soft touch of his fingertips. "I have...just a bit," she gasped. "It's considered more American. More modern, too. And, I like it. So, you see, sweetness, you're not the only one who's changed since last we saw each other...in more ways than one"

He gave her a lopsided grin as he said, "I think I like it."

"Mmmm," she moaned as he moved the palm of his hand to cup her hot sex. "Oh, God—Angel..."

"And I think I like the fact that you haven't changed this part even more," he told her as he moved his thumb towards the bottom of her already wet slit.

He dipped his thumb in between her folds, and moved upwards in a motion that began to part her from bottom to top. She hissed lightly when the pad of his calloused thumb reached the top of her labia, having dragged drops of her body's moisture with him as he moved. She arched her hips forward a bit when he moved his thumb to her already swollen clit and began to rub it in furious, if consistent, circles along its outer circumference. As he moved, he was glad he'd gathered what moisture he could as it made his touch even more slippery and maddening in what he knew was a pleasurable way for her. He hadn't been touching her for very long when he felt her body shudder as she moaned his name in a loud and breathy gasp. She collapsed against his body, and a goofy smile broke across his face as he realized how quickly she'd responded and come under his knowing touch.

"Good," she breathed in his ear. "So very good."

"That didn't take much," he observed wryly. "You went quick."

"Yes," she murmured. "I did. But, you've always done that to me. I don't know why you expected now to be any different."

"The more things change, the more they stay the same, hmmm?" he asked her with a smile as he let his hands fall away from her warm folds, despite the fact that she made a vague whimper of protestation at the loss of contact. He tried to soften her loss by leaning forward and pressing his lips to hers in a soft kiss. The kiss started out gentle, his chapped lips coasting softly over her delicately soft ones. He wanted to draw things out and give her time to build steadily towards a significant climax again, and so tried to begin to bank the embers of her desire with his kiss. However, in that moment, Brennan wanted none of his patience. She was greedy for the taste of him once more, and so she tried to accelerate the speed with which his lips pressed against hers. Her tongue was the first to bridge the gap between them as it darted out from the wet, warm confines of her mouth. She lightly pressed her mouth against his, letting her tongue attempt to pry his wet lips apart as a first step in laying siege to his defenses. After a moment of token protest, he welcomely granted her the access she so craved. The two bodies pressed even more tightly against one another as Brennan felt his tongue twirl around hers, she pushing her breath into his mouth as an involuntary reaction when she gasped in response to feeling him press his swollen erection against the softness of her thigh. He nudged her legs apart before he guided them across the few steps that separated them from the bed. He stopped them only long enough to pull away from the kiss so that he could raise his hands and push the loose robe from her shoulders. It fell to the ground in a silky _whoosh _as the fabric pooled at her feet. Angel gave her another grin before he pressed into her once again, using his hand to steady her descent as she fell onto the bed, and he quickly covered his body with hers.

Brennan had always considered herself rather adroit when it came to how far she could push her body in this way or twist it in that direction. One of the things she prided herself on was knowing her limits and always working to surpass them to make herself stronger. As the twentieth century had dawned, she'd spent a fair amount of her time divided between the library and lecture halls of Northwestern University and active field work in places as widely traveled as from Egypt to central Mexico to the Emirate of Afghanistan. The time she divided between honing her mental skills and maintaining her body's fit tone and lithe flexibility had resulted in her becoming what she believed to be a fairly well-balanced individual. However, in that moment as Angel pressed his body onto hers, Brennan was quite pleased that she was strong enough not only to keep up with his movements, but to match him each time and time again as he continued to lead their dance in a way that demonstrated that he'd seemingly found enough confidence to take finally take the lead with her.

As she scooted towards the middle of the bed, Angel quickly pressed forward on his hands and knees, not letting her get more than a few inches away from him before he caught up to her again.

"Where do you think you're going?" he chuckled as he grabbed her hip with his fingertips and squeezed.

Brennan gave him a lopsided grin and then said with a chuckle, "Not very far."

"Damn straight," he grunted before he nudged her legs apart with his knee, scooted closer to her, and then leaned down to grasp her mouth with his in a greedy kiss. He closed his eyes as he lost himself in the warm, sweet taste of her mouth, a low hum sounding from deep in his chest as he pressed his hips against hers in a gesture that belied his self-control. "God, I've missed you," he whispered as he pulled his mouth from hers. He gazed into her heavy-lidded blue eyes and returned her lazy grin as he admired the way the skin of her shoulders and chest had suddenly flushed a delicious pink.

"Have you now?" she asked breathlessly as he thrust his aroused flesh against her thigh.

Angel narrowed his eyes and smirked, dipping his head down as he began to lay a series of soft, slightly sucking kisses along her collarbone. "Yes," he whispered. "I thought about you...all the time...over the years..." Brennan arched her back and sighed as his lips moved lower and began to deposit wetter kisses as he migrated to the space between her breasts. His words came haltingly, interrupted by his seemingly irresistible urge to cover every bit of her ivory skin with his mouth. "Even...if I tried not to...I still..." He brushed his dry lips across the round swell under one of her breasts and his tongue darted out to flick along the edge of her nipple. "I still thought about you all the time...you were the only good thing I could look back on..." He twirled his tongue around the hard point of her nipple and smiled at the way she moaned in response. "Sometimes...when the memories would come...I'd force myself to think of you, and..." He took a breath and turned his head, closing his lips around her other nipple and sucking it firmly for a few seconds before releasing it. "I'd think about the way you felt...the way you tasted...the way you'd sounded..." He drew another long, hard suck, his lips forming a smile around her flesh as she groaned at the sensations.

Brennan sighed as she felt his lips finally release her nipple, hissing a little at the sudden loss of contact but relaxing again into his touch as his lips continued to work their way down to her belly. "Inside me," she grunted as Angel's hands slid down her side, over her round hip and along the outside of her thighs. "Please," she begged through gritted teeth. "You have all the time in the world to work me over however you want, sweetness, but now? I need you inside of me, Angel. Now. Please." She brought her eyes to meet his and her mouth gaped open slightly as she noted the gleam in his dark brown eyes. "Right damn now."

Angel lowered his head and kissed her belly, then raised his gaze as he read the bright flash in her blue eyes. "I..."

"Now," she sighed, reaching down and closing her fingers around his wrists, tugging on his arms as she tried to pull his attention back to what she wanted so desperately.

Angel arched an eyebrow, then shook his head very slightly as he dismissed a silent flicker of doubt and moved back over her, leaning into his hands as he took a couple of moments to savor the way she looked, her skin deeply flushed with want, and her breasts, their taut nipples glistening with his saliva, swaying slightly as her chest heaved with ragged breaths.

"Yes," he said quietly as he positioned himself exactly where he'd always wanted to be—between her thighs—and reaching between his legs, he gave himself a couple of stiff tugs before he leaned in and held himself at her entrance. His keen nostrils filled with the musky smell of her desire and, after swiping his swollen tip along the length of her slippery folds a couple of times, he knew she was more than ready for him. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but in that moment no words of any gravity came to him, so he drew his hips back, leaned forward and pressed into her, throwing his head back, his eyes clenched shut as he felt her open up for him like a flower.

"Oh, Angel," she moaned as he pushed his way into her, inch by tortuous inch, until he was seated all the way to the hilt inside of her. Brennan reached her hands around and palmed his ass, which despite his somewhat gaunt appearance, was still muscular and grabbable. Pressing her fingertips into his flesh, she thrust her hip up into his to encourage him to move.

After a few moments, the heavy fog that had clouded Angel's mind in the wake of being inside of her again after a quarter century finally seemed to clear, and as he felt her warm, silky folds enveloped around him, he furrowed his brow low over his eyes, tucked his chin against his chest and began to move. He drew his hips back, wincing slightly as he pulled out of her, then thrust forward with a soft grunt and entered her again, driving into her harder than he had the first time as he buried himself balls-deep into her. He withdrew again, and rocked into her again as a low growl sounded deep in his chest. He kneaded his lips between his teeth as he moved, slowly at first, each stroke coming harder and faster on the heels of the one before as he began to surge into her, sending himself as deep into her as he could, helped in no small part by the way she met each of his strokes with one of her own.

"Ohhhh," he moaned. "Fuck, you feel good—_ohhh!"_

With each stroke, Angel felt the tingle at the base of his spine grow stronger and more insistent, and while it had been a long time since he'd been with her, he remembered well the way his release would creep up on him. He rocked his hips back and forth, his cool skin feeling almost hot with the heat that rolled off of her as he watched her closed eyes flutter open, and he knew by the subtle, fleeting flash of bright azure in her eyes that she was close.

"Ohhhh, Angel," she sighed, letting go of his ass and bringing her hands up to cup his jaw between her palms as she pulled him in for a kiss.

Their mouths crashed together and her tongue slid into his mouth, arcing across his tongue in a long, wet swipe as she sought to fill the inside of his mouth with her the way he had filled her completely with each hard, rolling stroke. She felt herself tighten around him as the coil of arousal that had been building in the pit of her belly tensed and she began to free-fall, no longer able to discern the feeling of the bed beneath her as all of her senses seemed to collapse into the singular sensation of him driving into her. The air around her suddenly seemed charged with particles of energy, and she felt the hair on her arms and the back of her neck stand on end when the edges of her vision flashed a bright blue.

"Ohhhh," she moaned as she pushed him away gently and broke their kiss. "Ohhh... ohhhhh... ohhhhh..._nnngthh_!" Her back arched off the mattress as she clenched around him and shattered, a long breathy sigh passing between her lips as she fluttered around his hard flesh as he continued to drive into her, slowing his own movements only for a moment as he watched her eyes flicker and her face slacken as her release took her.

The faint blue glow that had begun to surround them in the last moments before her orgasm pulsed bright as she broke, and Angel felt the energy of her release prick at his skin as her warm, wet folds tightened and then gently quivered around him. He managed to hold himself together for a few more strokes before the crackle of blue electricity arced between them again and heralded the moment that he, too, fractured. He felt himself spilling into her as he jerked into her one last time, sending himself as deeply into her as he could and holding himself there as his hot come pulsed into her.

"Ohhh, lass," he sighed, calling her in the moment of his release by the endearment he reserved only for her. "_Ohhhh_..."

Angel leaned his head back and closed his eyes as the last lazy pulse of his orgasm faded and he felt a feeling of warm heaviness fall over him. He held himself over her, gazing admiringly at the soft smile that broke across her flushed face as she watched him descend from the peak of his release. He glanced down at where they were joined and grinned in quiet satisfaction, then winced slightly as his softening flesh slipped out of her. He rolled off of her and onto his back, folding his hands behind his head as he wondered at how it seemed everything had changed for him in the matter of just a few hours.

After a moment, Brennan felt a slight pang of regret when he rolled off of her. She quickly shifted onto her side so that she was facing him across the expanse of her large four-poster bed as her breathing returned to normal.

Hesitantly, she reached out and let her fingertips lightly touch his shoulder. "What is it?" she asked, her voice taking on an unusually tender hint as she spoke.

Looking over at her for a minute, Angel shook his head gently. "It's strange," he said quietly. "Wonderful, but strange, after all this time, to just feel...I don't know, Brennan, it's—well, I don't know how to explain it. I don't think I've ever felt the way I feel right now, and I'm not quite certain what to make of it."

She was quiet for another moment and then said with a soft sigh, "That's what fucking with a soul does to you. You feel...everything. All at once...for both good and bad. It's...well...Angel, I'm sure you experienced this before, it's just been so long that you've probably forgotten."

"Well," he said, a smile coming to him as he thought about the servant girl he'd gone after in his father's house, right before he was thrown out, just weeks before he met Darla. The trail of the memory soured his smile. "No—I mean, yes, I suppose, maybe."

"Maybe?" Brennan asked with a curious arch of her dark eyebrow.

"It's just that I can't help feeling as if it's more than that somehow," he told her.

Brennan considered his words for a minute. "You've spent a lot of the time out in the cold, sweetness," she said. "You've been alone, hungry, sad, and starved in more ways than one, I think—not just for blood, although I think that's a part of it. You've been starved for attention and affection and warmth." She stopped for a moment before she added, "Going from living a life of want...where you get what you want and know you're wanted in return, it's no small thing, Angel. Believe me, I know."

He was quiet for a minute, and then he reached out, sliding an arm underneath her body before he pulled her towards him. He pulled her close, shifting a bit so that he was partially lying on his side, letting his arms wrap lightly around her back. Cradling her in his arms, he whispered, "I don't like to see you sad."

She smiled at his simple statement and then reached out and placed a light kiss on his lips. "I'm not sad," she said. "Honestly. I feel many things right now, but sadness isn't one of them."

He stared deeply into her eyes and then asked, "What are you feeling, lass?"

"I'm feeling..." her voice trailed off and then she cracked a smile as she said, "Wanted. Very, _very _wanted."

"Aye?" he asked.

"_Mmmm hmmmm_," she murmured. "I do. And, it feels very, _very _good."

"I'm glad," he said. "I'm very glad that you feel that way because so do I. And, you're right. It feels very good to want and to be wanted."

He shifted slightly so that she could mold her body against the curve of his torso in a way that she'd come to show a marked preference for over the years.

They were quiet for a moment, enjoying the peace and warmth that came with being able to enjoy one another's company. As Brennan pressed herself against his cool, smooth skin, she sighed again, a small breathy whisper that almost seemed like a purr.

After another moment, she said, "Angel?"

"Mmmm?"

"I think I'm glad I found you this night," she told him. "Very glad."

"Me, too," he said. He paused and then said, "You know, I don't think...well, it's hard to explain, since you've never been without a soul, but..."

Angel felt Brennan tense at his words. He was slightly taken aback when he heard her say, "You might be surprised."

He shook his head, his eyebrows knitting low over his dark brown eyes as he struggled to make sense of her words. "Huh?" he murmured, caught more than a bit off-guard by her remark. Angel reached his arm across and stroked his finger over the smooth skin of her upper arm. He thought about her comment, puzzling at what she might possibly have meant, since she was fully human—at least, of a type, so far as he knew—and always had been, and therefore could not possibly any notion of what it was like to live soullessly as he had. "What?"

Brennan was quiet for a few seconds and then Angel felt her body relax as she said, "It's nothing."

"You sure?"

"Yes," she said, snuggling against him. "Go on. You were saying?"

"It's just that...well, I just don't think I've ever actually felt this happy, you know? Even before, before I was turned...you know, when I had a soul before...I don't think it was ever anywhere close to feeling this...how I feel when I'm with you. I was with women, messed around, got drunk, played around, had a lot of fun. But it never felt this way. I was never...well...this...not negative." He shrugged and blushed. "That probably sounds stupid."

She considered his words as a slight tingling made the hair on the back of her neck stand straight up on end.

She closed her eyes for a minute, and it was almost as if she felt a tugging at the edges of her mind when she reached out and felt her consciousness wash over Angel's essence. As she did so, her throat went dry as she suddenly realized that when she touched upon the taint left on him by the Kalderash Gypsies, there was an explanation as to why she'd felt so strange since she'd encountered him in the alley. While it was difficult to describe the feel and experience of encountering the Gypsy magicks that had cursed him with a soul, she finally realized that she could also feel a small bit of her own powers that had already sought out some of the more caustic edges of the curse and begun work in trying to soften them. It was almost as if her powers were working to keep something at bay, to keep something powerfully negative from happening. And, as the strands of her powers intermingled with the Gypsy magic, she somehow knew that if what had just transpired between the two of them had happened with any other person but her, without her powers something drastic would've transpired. As she grappled with the implications of her thoughts, she felt a knot tighten in the pit of her stomach since she knew it could mean only one thing.

_Oh, God, _she whispered, as she tried to make sense of what her subconscious had apparently done with her having realized it to this point. _What...what have I done?_

The small, almost imperceptible knot of her own powers intermingling with the magicks that clung to him, she knew, could only happen if one thing had started to happen.

_Oh, God_—_that's it,_ she suddenly realized. _That's...he's it. He's the one. He's...that's_—_it's the only explanation. There's only one reason why this would happen. Like this. Here. Now. With him. I mean, it can't be coincidence, right? There are no such things. After twenty-five years, what are the odds that we'd just find our ways back to one another, unless there was a reason, a purpose to it all? How else could I find him on __tonight__ of all nights? I don't know how this could be, but ...I think, yes, I think it is. It makes sense. It_—_he_—_us. It makes sense. _

She paused as she shifted slightly and raised her fingers to caress a random spot on his chest.

_But, wait, _she thought._ He's already been through so much. I can't...we can't. That is, not unless he agrees. It can't happen...I have to find someway to stop it until he knows. He has to know and realize exactly what he's getting into here. He has to make the choice himself. Free choice, free will. I won't have him take on this burden himself unless he chooses it. I can't make that decision for him. I won't. I won't hurt him like that. It's got to be him. But, oh, God...how do I even begin to tell him?_

Lost in her thoughts, Brennan was quiet for an unusual amount of time.

Angel swallowed once, feeling a bit nervous at her prolonged silence and the way her once-supple form had tensed as she lay curled against him with her cheek resting on the damp skin of his chest. He turned his head, pressed a soft kiss against her forehead, then said quietly, "It's okay. I know it was silly."

Suddenly realizing how lost in her own thoughts she'd been, Brennan lifted her head from where she'd been resting it on his chest. She quickly replayed in her mind what Angel had just said and then slowly shook her head.

"It's not silly," she said, her voice quiet and more introspective than it had been just a few moments earlier. "It's just that—well, can I ask you a question?"

"Sure," he said as he pressed another light kiss to her forehead. "You can ask me anything you want."

Pressing her body against him once in a half-embrace, Brennan then rolled away from him so that she could face him better.

He arched an eyebrow as he watched her move and then said, "Uh oh."

"What?" she blinked at him, confusion clear on her face.

"It's just that it must be something serious if you're assuming the position," he said. He felt a bit lightheaded as he surveyed her face, suddenly overcome by a wave of doubt. _Does she regret it? _he wondered. _What we've just done? Taking me in this night. Please, no. _He pressed his lips together and sighed. _I don't want her to regret anything. I want her to want me the way I want her—to feel for me the way I feel about her right now. _He cocked his head to the side and watched her. _If not regret, then what is it that has her so pale-faced and tense? What is it that suddenly has her so rattled? _.

Brennan propped her head on top of her hand and then said, "It's not so bad. At least, I don't think it is."

"Okay," he nodded, some relief coming onto his concerned face. _Thank God._ "Then go ahead. Ask me anything."

She stared at his concerned brown eyes for a moment and then took a breath. She blinked a few times before she asked, "Why have you never, in all the times we've bedded, ever asked me about the blue light?" She chewed her lip for a minute before she added, "I know that you've noticed it. It's...well, I know it's not the sort of thing that one can miss...especially since it always happens—"

"Whenever we have sex," Angel said quietly, completing her sentence for her. He twisted his jaw as he considered what to say and then nodded slowly. "Yeah, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't noticed it."

"But, you've never brought it up," Brennan nodded at him.

"No," he conceded. "I didn't."

"Why not?" Brennan asked.

Angel rubbed his clean-shaven jaw with his thumb and nibbled the inside of his lip for a moment. "Well," he began. "At first, when everything was so new and...well, it was just so intense the first few months after the night at Covent Garden. You remember? I was driving myself crazy trying to keep Darla satisfied while trying to come up with some excuse to disappear for a bit—long enough so that I could get clean enough to not have to worry about you tossing my sorry ass over the balcony like you did that one time." He stopped for a minute, a wry smile tugging at his lips as he let the now humorous memory replay in his head even though, at the time, he remembered feeling anything but amusement. He looked at Brennan and said with a raised eyebrow, "Remember?"

"I remember," Brennan replied with a reflective nod. "I was so angry at you—not just because you were arrogant enough to think you could get one over on me, but that you had to audacity to think you could just stroll from some East End whore's bed to mine when your prick was still dripping from when you'd just swived some slut with it, and you expected me not only to tolerate it, but to be happy that you'd made time for me." She stopped, smiling at him in a slightly acerbic way, as she added, "Oh course, there was also the fact that I was pissed I had to kick you out of my bed, and we wouldn't be fucking any time soon once I'd done it." Brennan laughed a bit as she added, "I didn't particularly like that aspect of it, since it meant I wouldn't be getting off at your expense that night. But, of course, it wasn't like I had much of a choice in the matter. You needed to be taught a lesson. And, I knew that if I didn't do it that first time, you'd walk all over me from that point forward. So, I knew I needed to make a statement, and all in all, in the long-term, I think it was an effective lesson, hmmm?"

"Yes," he grumbled, reminded in that moment of how angry he'd been that she'd thought he needed to be put in his place and, perhaps even more aggravating, that she was the one to do it. He shook away the fleeting feeling of impassioned annoyance. "It _was _a lesson—one that I learned all too well," Angel said with a vague grin. He thought back to that night, how he'd shaken off the lingering soreness he'd felt after falling one and a half stories to the street below. "I was so pissed that night," he admitted. "And after you threw me out, I was pissed, and so fired up with an energy that I didn't know what to do with, that I went on a bit of an impromptu pub crawl in Whitechapel. I drank, but the drinking never took the edge off, being as I am, so I went a-fightin'. I picked fights with these guys in the pubs, just 'cause I had to do something with all that pent-up energy, and not being able to burn it off between the sheets with you as I'd planned, I..." He bit back a laugh and said, "Well, it's a wonder I didn't get tossed in the clink that night. But, in any case, I never made _that _mistake again, did I?"

"No," she said. "That you didn't. You made other ones, like shooting off that big mouth of yours, but I like to think that we got to a point that you were a bit more careful around me than you were with others."

"Oh, that I was, lass," he nodded with a faint grin. "Because I never knew when I was gonna black out and wake up with a thumpin' headache and naked while you dangled me from your ceiling like it was some kind of freakish rendition of Mistress Brennan's Lewd Puppet Hour." He frowned a bit as he added, "You know, that's one of the main reasons I never liked bringing up the whole magic bit with you because it always seemed whenever you used yours hocus pocus bag of tricks on me, I always ended up naked, tied up, and eventually begging you to let me fuck you."

"Now, wait a minute," Brennan chuckled a bit in feigned indignation. "You act like I was tying you up all the time like some grand Queen of the Tower's Torture Chamber. I wasn't _that _bad. I just had to do it every so often to make certain you didn't get any strange notions in your head about us and forget who I was, because we both know, if you did, you probably would've lost what little respect you had for me." She then gave him a bit of a lewd smile as she added, "Besides, it's not like I didn't eventually turn you loose, and then make certain you were amply rewarded for any time you spent restrained, hmmm?"

"True," Angel chuckled. "You always did reward me, it's true. You know that you're the only one who's ever gotten away with doing that to me." He paused, then said with a crooked grin, "And that was in part because I loved fucking you as much as I did, you know."

Brennan narrowed her eyes and smirked.

Seeing her smirk, Angel was reminded of how many nights he'd spent in her bed over the years. He mentally thumbed through his memories of the nights with her like a deck of cards, until he finally came to the last time he'd been in her arms, in 1898. From that point, he couldn't help himself as his mind quickly made the jump from the rather pleasant memory of the last time they'd bedded to what had come just a few days later. He felt a darkness wash over him as his mind was flooded with the memory of his last rampage in Romania, and the magic curse he met once it was over. His expression then got a bit more serious as he nodded to himself, jettisoning the traumatic memory and holding his silence for a few more moments before he continued.

"You know, Bren—like I was saying, you know...about your powers? Well, it just got to a point—even if I never would've told you this then—but I was just a tad bit nervous as to what might happen if the 'm' word came up. That made me bite my tongue and just, well, ignore it." He paused and then added, "Plus, on the rare occasions I thought of it, I was always fairly certain you'd tell me it was some witch's secret or something. You always seemed happy to tell me what your magic could do—especially what it could do to me if you were of half a mind to give me a demonstration—but, you never really mentioned how it worked. Since I didn't really like the whole magic thing that you had going on anyway, I didn't want to pry, I guess—so, you're right. I just kept my mouth shut."

"Were you...were you ever curious?" Brennan asked, her voice definitely not its normally confident tone as she asked him. When he gave her a strange look, she quickly amended, "I mean, just from a purely hypothetical point of view."

"About the light?" Angel asked. He thought about it for a minute and then nodded, "Well, yeah. Sure. I guess. I mean, it's...I've never experienced anything like that in my entire life...and I think we both know that's kinda saying something."

"Yes," Brennan nodded slowly. "It is."

"So...what does that mean?" Angel asked. "I mean, from a purely hypothetical point of view, since I know we're not talking about anything real." He paused as he tilted his head and added, "That is...we aren't, are we?"

Brennan's tongue darted out of her mouth and swiped across her bottom lip in an uncharacteristically nervous gesture. She quickly swallowed once as she responded, Well...what would you say if I said we were? Would...would that bother you?"

Angel was quiet for a minute and then he countered, "Should it bother me?" He held her gaze for a long minute.

Brennan then, in another unusual move, broke eye contact first before she answered his question. "I don't know, Angel," she sighed. "It's...it's very confusing to me. It's probably why I never felt comfortable about sharing such things with you...you know, as you used to be, back then? There was always a bit of dangerousness in your unpredictability. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that was one of the things I found most attractive about you from the very first time I ever saw you. But, from a perspective of giving you information that you could use to manipulate me if you wanted...well, I-I...I didn't trust you farther than I could throw you. Literally, as it were."

"I know that," he nodded at her. "It's okay, Bren. I wouldn't have trusted me back then either. So I understand completely why you always did keep me on a tight leash that way back then since you never told me more than you wanted to. In any case, at some point, early on, I stopped asking." He paused, offering her a faint smile, then continued. "Besides, at some level, to be honest, I didn't really care. That ol' me—he was more or less just about getting under your skirts." Despite the seriousness of the current turn of their conversation, he couldn't help himself as he gave her a wink and added, "Of course, the new me doesn't mind that last bit, if you know what I mean." He waggled his eyebrows at her to emphasize his point. "As a matter of fact, I rather like it."

"Well, that's hardly surprising," Brennan laughed in spite of herself. "You always did."

Thankful that he'd been able to dispel some of her own anxiety, she leaned in and kissed him again. She couldn't help it, really. Her head began to swim as he tried to deepen the kiss. On the edge of losing what little ability she'd managed to piece together in the afterglow of their tryst, Brennan knew she wasn't going to last long. It was only when she felt the swarthy velvet of his tongue twist in her mouth that she knew she needed to act before they crossed a point of no return, i.e., before she lost the ability to remember the very important point they needed to discuss. After a minute, she reluctantly pulled away from him.

"Mmmm," she sighed in happy contentment. "That was good—"

"I think so, too," he said, eagerly leaning towards her, following after her even as she tried to put a bit of distance between them. "Very good. But I think we can do better, Bren. In fact, I _know _we can."

He reached towards her and started to nuzzle into her neck with a low hum. She tilted her head so that it was pressed against the softness of his newly cut hair, a small purr in the back of her throat the only thing that pulled her back into the land of rationality once more.

"Angel," she whispered, her voice wistful and reluctant as she reveled in his touch.

"What?" he murmured against her soft skin.

"Wait," she told him. "For just a minute—"

"Why?" he asked, even as he leaned closer to her and made it clear he had no intention of doing what she'd asked of him.

"Because," she moaned, arched her back as he moved his lips down her neck, across her shoulder, and towards her upthrust breast. "I need to tell you something, but I can't do it if I can't think, and I can't think straight with you doing that thing you're doing to my tit with your tongue—_ohhhhh._..."

He grinned as he released the hold he had on her nipple. "Then don't think."

"But, I—"

"Come on, Bren," he whispered. "I need you."

"You just had me," she moaned, amazed at the feelings of want he was able to evoke in her despite the fact that she'd already shattered twice in the past hour

"Doesn't matter," he said through a half-lick/half-kiss of the bottom swell of her left breast. "It's not enough. It's never enough."

"Oooohhhh," she groaned. "You are so _not _being fair..."

"So sorry," he muttered as he lifted his head towards hers and flashed her another cheeky grin. "But, I think I've caught my second wind, and I don't want to take the chance and see it go to waste."

Arching an eyebrow at him, she quickly grabbed his shoulder and used what leverage she could to pull him towards the middle of the bed. After a minute or two of scuffling, the pair burst out into a fit of laughter when Brennan landed on top of him.

"Now," she gasped, for breath. "Why is it that I always have your best attention when I've got you pinned underneath me?"

"Hmmmm," he murmured. "I'm gonna hazard a guess that it's because I'm a man. Even though I'm a vampire, I'm still a man. You have my most undivided attention when you're on top of me, and I'm staring up at your wonderful bosom." His eyes locked on her pert nipples. He then, without lifting his gaze to meet hers, asked, "Wait, what were we talking about?" He laughed as she squeezed her knees into his sides and finally drew his stare to meet hers. Raising his head again, he tried to seek out her mouth with his. But, knowing how important it was to discuss the thought that had just occurred to her, Brennan used every ounce of willpower she had to turn her head away from his kiss.

"No," she whispered. "That is, not...not until we've...I need to tell you something, Angel."

"But—" he pleaded. "I want you, Bren. I have to have you. And I thought that you...that is...we could—" His voice trailed off as he made a face and then added, his voice nearly a whine, "But I let you cut my hair. And you said after we were finished that we could—"

"We can," she nodded at him.

He smiled a toothy grin at her as he lifted his shoulders up off the bed a bit to reach for her mouth with his before he said, "Great."

"No," she repeated, this time her voice a bit more firm. He again gave her a slightly hurt look. "That is, not yet. I need ten minutes—" He quirked an eyebrow at her, and she nodded. "After that, once we've talked, if you still want to see what we can do with that second wind of yours, I promise, I'm all yours."

Realizing he was caught, Angel pulled away from her with a sigh. "Okay," he muttered. "I don't...like...it. But I guess I don't really have...much of a choice. So, okay. You've got your ten minutes. Now, what do you need to tell me?"

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~**tbc**~

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**A/N2- **So, of course, since this is a dharmasera piece, you didn't think it was going to end without at least one evil cliffhanger, did you? Again, there's good news and there's bad news...and again, it's the same. Part III will resolve the question as to just what type of confession Brennan needs to make for Angel...and it will be posting tonight as we wrap up our conclusion to the Day of Comfort. Until then, if you're of a mind, we'd love to hear of what you thought of both Parts I & II...and we've been told writing a review or two does help to pass the time. Many thanks in advance!


	3. Part III: A Triumph Over Reason

**Comfort on the Edge of Reason**

**By:** Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

**Rated: **M

**Disclaimer: **Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from _Bones _or _Angel... _or anything else. Yes, we're wreaking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? ::blinks:: Good. Then, moving on―

**Summary: **Chicago. Halloween 1923. The witch Temperance Brennan encounters Angel for the first time since he'd been ensouled. Bones/Angel crossover. Very, very AU. Sequel to "Toe to Toe," "Barging In" and "Making Him Beg." Complete.

**A/N: **Here it is ladies and gents! This is the epic conclusion to our Day of Comfort posting. We hope you enjoy the final part of this story. So, when last we left our fearless duo, Brennan was about to confess something to Angel. What was that again...?

UNF ALERT! Sorry. This is part 3 of a 42k monster that's been posted in a single 24-hour period. We don't have anything else witty to say (see previous parts for more creative disclaimers about the impending hints of unfness). The usual terms and conditions apply. If this isn't your thing, or you aren't legal, why are you even here? In a word, just don't. Thanks.

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**Part III: A Triumph Over Reason**

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She shot him a look as she tried to tell him that she was as unhappy about the delay in their extracurricular activities as he, but it didn't seem to convince him as she rolled away from him, hoping that by putting a modicum of distance between them, it would help make things easier. Clutching the cream-colored flannel sheet to her chest, she attempted to straighten out her back as much as she was able to do so. She watched him for a moment, as his dark eyes smoldered in the dim light afforded the room when it was lit only by the flickering candle and the quivering fire in the hearth. She could tell that he was studying her, and for the space of a beat, she enjoyed the sensation before she took a breath and began to speak.

"I don't believe in coincidences," she told him, repeating word-for-word the litany that she'd just pieced together in her head. "For our paths to cross on this night...of all nights during the year, when we haven't seen each other in twenty-five years? Well, I don't think that was a random chance or occurrence. I-I...I think there was a greater purpose to that even if neither one of us might not know what that purpose is or why it's happened."

Angel was quiet for a moment and then he tilted his head at her before he spoke. "I never saw you as one who believed in destiny or fate, Bren," he said.

"If you want to define destiny or fate as the events of this world happening because there is a purpose or pattern to them—for better or worse, for good or ill...then I suppose, yes, I'd have to admit that I do support that assertion," she said with a nod. "I think it might be ludicrous to deny that there are things out there that are greater than either one of us. I mean, think about it. Just between you and I, we've seen more things of a mystical or supernatural nature to fill several lifetimes—"

"Setting aside the finer point that both of us are of the supernatural?" he said, interrupting her as he reached out and wrapped one of his fingers around the long lock of soft auburn hair that fell across her chest. He twirled the shiny lock of hair around his index finger before he looked back up at her and gave her a toothy grin. "Right?"

"Well," Brennan nodded slowly. "I do think that might be a slight understatement, but yes."

He swallowed and blinked, then looked into her deep blue eyes. "So you...you think that there's some, well, bigger reason that our paths have crossed this night, in this place?"

Brennan was quiet for a moment and then said, "I don't know. But, I can tell you that with you being here with me now...in this way, in this time, in this place...it's not without its...certain ironic significance. I mean, this is the one time of year...the three days, really, that I'm both at my most powerful and my most vulnerable here."

"I don't know what any of that means, Bren," he said, narrowing his dark eyes and raking his hands through his hair. He thought for a moment, then shrugged with a heavy sigh. "I-I just...look, I don't know what any of this means, or why it's happening either," he said with a shake of his head. "But, I can't help but feel like you're trying to tell me something." He paused, licked his lips, then looked into her eyes again. "Are you?"

"Yes," she said, her voice tight as she spoke. "But, I'm not sure how to tell you. Because...well, I'm scared, Angel. I'm scared that I'll tell you and then you'll run away from me, and I'll never see you again. And, I'm not certain why...at least, not completely, but I can tell you that I get a sick feeling in my stomach every time I think about you walking out the door."

"Whatever it is, you can tell me," he said, his voice calm and soothing to her growing sense of anxiety. He had never, in sixty-odd years, ever heard her utter a word indicating she was afraid of anything, and the revelation took him completely by surprise. He felt an ache in his chest at hearing her fear, and he wanted nothing more than to protect her from it.. "I promise, Bren. If you're willing to let me stay, even if just for the next couple of nights, I'll stay. I want to stay...here...with you. I-I...don't want to go back out there. I don't want to hurt you, or cause you any pain or..." He stopped and then added in what may have been the most most tender voice Brennan had ever heard him use with her. "I don't want to leave you. I want...I-I want to stay. Here. With you. That is...if you want me to want to stay here with you?"

She again felt a knot tightening in her stomach as she realized how much trust he'd put in her to let him see her when he was at what seemed to be his most vulnerable. "Of course," she nodded at him. "Of course, I want you to stay here, with me. I want it more than anything in the world. You're welcome to stay as long as you like...I-I just...I wanted you to know what I knew, which—given, the current moment, isn't much, but...well, yeah—" Her voice trailed off before she shook her head, realizing that she was rambling and not telling him what she needed him to know. Taking a breath, she tried again. "Maybe I should start at the beginning," she mused.

"Okay," he nodded. "Then what's the beginning?"

At first glance, his question seemed incredibly simple. However, as she thought about it, she took a deep breath as she realized that if she was going to start at the beginning, she needed to start at the true beginning..._her _beginning and _her _past. And, in that moment, she realized that she not only needed to tell him, to make him understand, but that she _wanted _to do it. She wanted to trust him and wanted to have him know the truth of her. Emboldened by the thought and feelings he evoked in her, she told him, "I suppose...well, the best place to start would be...well, it's Halloween, Angel," she began with a hesitant nod. "It's the witches' sabbath, and for the next three days...it's a very...important time for a creature like me. And—" She paused shaking her head and then said, "What I'm trying to tell you is that all of it...our paths crossing, the blue light whenever we have sex...well, that's not normal for me. It only happens with you. And, given the fact that we're here together during the one time of year when I'm at my most powerful...and my most vulnerable...well, that's what I'm not doing a very good job telling you about. I just don't know how," she repeated. "I want to, and perhaps...I think, maybe, if I start by telling you what...who I really am, maybe that would be the best way to do it."

"Try," he pleaded with her. "I want to know you, Bren, who you are. You know I won't leave. I won't run. I'll stay here...with you. I promise. I won't leave you. You can tell me anything, Bren. I swear—"

She stopped and then reached out to him. She let the back of her hand rest lightly on his shoulder. She touched him for a moment and then tilted her head as she said, "You've changed." One of his eyebrows lifted in an unspoken question. "I mean, I know...obviously, that you've changed. Getting a soul back after having been without it for more than a century probably takes more than a bit of getting used to, I'm sure. It's just...in all the time I knew you as Angelus, I don't think I've ever seen you this...genuine, or this...heartfelt."

"Getting my soul back was meant to be a curse," he said after a long moment's pause. "And I'd be lying if I said it wasn't hell at first. Pure and unadulterated living hell, Bren, having to deal with the flood of feelings and emotions I felt when they were paired with the memories of what I'd done. But...I think, today, for the first time since it happened, I can honestly say that maybe...as far as curses go? Maybe it wasn't all bad if it means I can finally...feel something...for you." He placed his hand on her arm, tracing his fingertips over the line from her elbow to her palm, then clasped her hand in his. He tilted his head to one side and smiled sweetly as he stroked his thumb over hers. "Like I do right now."

Brennan stared at him for a long time, trying to see the truth of what he was saying in his brown eyes, and the more she stared at them, the more she realized the depth of emotion he was now capable of feeling. After a bit, she swallowed heavily and said, "You've suffered greatly since last we met."

"Yes," he said simply, his voice heavy as he answered what was really more of a statement than a question. "Immensely. And...that's because that's what they wanted me to...them, that's what they wanted from me. My suffering. And I did suffer. For the last twenty-five years, I've spent almost every waking moment suffering. But...right now, Bren? Here? With you? That doesn't matter. The only thing that matters to me is that right now _you're _the one that's hurting. And I'd very much like it if you'd let me try to see if there was something I could do about that."

"Angel," she began, the way she phrased his name making it clear that she wanted to ask him something, but once again was hesitant.

"Bren," he pleaded. "Please. Let me...let me help you."

When he silently encouraged her with his eyes, she slowly nodded and said, "You know I'm a very powerful witch."

"Yes," he responded simply. "I do."

"And...earlier...when I said I could smell the Romani magic of the Gypsies on you, I wasn't lying," she told him. "I knew...well, part of what I need to tell you. It has to do with that."

Angel gave her a confused look. "Bren, I don't...I don't understand. What do you mean? What could you possibly have to tell me that has to do with my curse?"

She took a deep breath and then explained, "Magic is an incredibly personal thing...and it's almost impossible for one witch or warlock to undo the spells of another." She paused and then leveled a look at him as she asked in a quiet voice, "But, if...somehow, someway, I could figure out a way to unburden you with the curse they've thrust upon you...would you want me to try to do it? Would you want me to help you in that way? Would you want me to try to use my powers in such a way even if it would...bind us? Would connect us in the fact that I'd somehow touched you with my powers?"

He studied her again as he felt a flash of excitement at the idea of being unburdened after nearly a quarter century of bearing the crushing weight of guilt. He licked his lips and blinked, the gesture the only sign he was a bit nervous before he looked up at her and asked, "Are you asking me if you could, would I want you to remove the Kalderash curse so that I no longer had a soul?"

Slowly, Brennan nodded. "I'm not even saying such a thing is possible. Their magic...well, it's not the same as my own. It's incredibly tricky. But, if in some way, I could try to help you in that way, knowing we'd be connected forever, would you want me to? Would you want me to do that?"

Angel thought about it for a minute and then slowly shook his head. "No," he told her. "I mean, what I feel tonight for you, after being with you...I am indebted to you forever for saving me tonight, for showing me the kindness you have. I would not mind being bound to you—in a way, I feel like we've been bound this way for a long time, really...but, well...if it means I would lose my soul, then I don't think I can...I want to keep it. I don't want to lose it, even if it's caused me pain..."

He looked down, breaking eye contact with her as he thought of how to explain himself. He covered his eyes with his hand and sighed, then raised his head and began to speak again.

"With a soul, Bren," he began, "well, at least, with it...having it...there's some balance to me now, you know? I know that there's a great pit of evil tied up inside me. Angelus, he's still in there, somewhere, but...well, it's hard to explain, but it's balanced...the demon is balanced by the humanity of my soul. I don't...I-I don't want to lose that. I don't know what I'd do if I did because I can never go back to the monster that I was. To be Angelus again, unchecked, uncontrolled? I don't know...knowing what I do, how I could stand it. So, no, Bren. I can't tell you how much it means to me that you'd even think about trying to help me in that way, but I couldn't let you do something like that. I just..."

Angel's voice fell away as he stared at one spot on the far wall that seemed to have become quite interesting for him. He frowned, turning away from the wall and closing his eyes with a sigh.

After another moment or two of silence he opened his eyes again and said, "I-I...I just want to find a way to live with the memories, the pain of knowing what I did, and the guilt. It's the guilt that's the worst. If I could find some way to balance that, I think I'd, eventually, be able to live some type of life. But, going back to my life as Angelus? No. No. Knowing what I did and the pain I caused when I lived as him, well...I'd rather be in pain and suffer than cause pain and suffering for others. It's...it's as it was meant to be. And, some way...I'll find a way to cope. I'm just not sure how. And until I find it, I just...I'm trying to take things one night at a time, you know?"

Brennan didn't respond to his question. When she left it unanswered, Angel couldn't help but ask, "Bren?"

She drew a long breath, and then said in a strange voice that he didn't think that he'd ever heard before, in what appeared to be a night full of first for the pair, "What if I told you that I can offer you a way to cope?"

"Without losing my soul?" Angel questioned her.

"Yes," Brennan nodded. "What if I told you there was a way...there was something that I could give you that would make it different than it is now? What if I told you that...in a way, I've already given you a taste of what it could be like if you agreed to an offer that I could make you?"

"What do you mean?" Angel asked, the confusion clearly writ on his furrowed brow. "Bren, I don't understand."

"There's more to the Gypsy curse than just you being given your soul back, Angel," Brennan said, reminding him of a fact of which he knew only all too well. "You know that."

"Yes," he said. "At least, I mean it's not like they gave me a book of frequently asked questions when they cursed me. But...wait." He paused and then questioned her, "Do you mean all the pain and suffering that came about because of me having my soul back?"

"No," Brennan said with a small shake of her head. She stopped for a moment and made a face as she struggled to sense the finer threads of the curse that the Gypsy had bound to Angel. At last, she stopped and sighed in frustration.

"What is it?" he asked.

"There's something there," she told him. "I can't tell what it is, but there's something there that my powers have started to bind to..."

"What?" he blinked at her in complete surprise.

"I'm not certain how to explain this, but, well...our connection, Angel? It's already started to tentatively fuse. I...as I said, I can offer you something that will help you to bear the burden of that guilt you feel...the remorse? But, only if you accept it. It must be freely given on my part and freely accepted by you. However, in anticipation of us finalizing that giving and acceptance... my magic? It's already started...well, it's hard to say how, but it seems that it's already started to protect you from the full effects of the curse taking hold. It's acting as some guard against the evil they wanted to inflict on you, but it's tricky. And, even I know that even with my extensive powers, it can only go so far. I can only offer you so much protection, but—"

"Bren," he said, raising his hand as he interrupted her. "What are you trying to tell me?"

Swallowing in a very pronounced way, Brennan said, "Earlier? When you said after we bedded that you hadn't felt like that before? The reason why you felt that way was because of _me_, Angel. I don't know how or why that I know that, but I do. I know it to be the truth. It was happiness that you felt, because you're feeling what I'm feeling. It's...it's because we've started to become intertwined. And, I can stop that process from happening now, if...that is, if you want me to. But, it means...once I do? You won't be able to come near me again. _Ever. _I can...only once. I don't think I'll ever be able to have the strength or skill to stop it more than once. So, whatever your choice, from this point forward...it will change things between us. Forever."

"I've already lost you once, Bren," he said, shaking his head. "I don't want to lose you again. And I...well...you're saying that you know a way that I can somehow, you know, endure the memories of what I've done and see myself through the other side so I can live with...with it all?" He fell silent and his eyes blinked as he stared at the bedsheets for several long moments, deep in thought. "You're saying that you can give me something so that I don't have to lose you, and maybe can find myself again? And manage the guilt...the pain?"

"To understand what I'm offering you," she began, her voice soft so that Angel knew he'd have trouble hearing her if he was a human. "You have to understand what I am...how I came to be what I am."

"Okay," he replied, blinking as he thought that this woman whom he had known, in a sense, so intimately, so many times, was really a mystery to him, even after sixty-odd years. She knew so much about him, and his history, but he knew so little about her. "So tell me."

"You know that I was born in March of 1533, in London. My mother, Christine, she was a midwife. That much was commonly known. She came from a long line of healers, her family lineage dating back to Celtic blood of people who ruled Albion long before the conquests of the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, and Normans made England into what it's become today."

"Aye, now the truth comes out," he said with a smile. "English though you've always claimed to be—at heart, you're a Celt like me. No wonder we have always enjoyed a natural affinity, mmm?"

"Hmmm," Brennan said. "I never thought of it like that, but you're right."

"Heh," Angel smiled softly. "I love it when you say that."

Shaking her head lightly, Brennan continued, "My mother liked it when my father told her she was right. I suppose it's something in your Celtic blood, hmm?"

Nodding, he admitted, "Perhaps. The Irish have always loved to argue, probably because we always want to be right. Maybe the Celts of Britain are the same." He shrugged, then urged her to continue with a jerk of his chin. "But..that's not important right now. What is important is that you stop this soddin' Irishman from runnin' off at the tongue and distractin' us from what's really important here." She laughed lightly at his self-deprecating jibe. "Your mother. You were saying something about your mother. Tell me about her," he coaxed her.

"Well," she continued, "while, like many of their kind, mother's people adopted Christianity when it came to Britain's shores, they still retained the beliefs in the Old Ways that didn't conflict with the teachings of the Catholic Church. My mother revered nature and the power of worlds known and unknown."

Brennan paused to smile as she thought of her mother, memories that she didn't often indulge in because they often brought her to a time and place in her long life that she knew she was better off not remembering lest she endure the pain such memories eventually evoked in her.

"All the women in my family, you see, we've always been somewhat more...well, attuned to the various powers in this world. You might even say I come from a long line of wise women who were practicing their craft long before the term 'witch' was ever applied to them."

Angel nodded his head slowly, indicating her that she should continue.

"Before I was born," Brennan explained. "My parents, that is...my mother had fallen in love with a boy from a local farming family. Love matches were rare in that time, but becoming more common. I think my mother sensed a certain power that my father had in him even before he knew it. She was attracted to that at first, and other things later. So, they married, and she taught him how to harness his natural talents...and, for a time, they were two people who were very much in love and very happy. The only sadness they had was that, no matter how much they tried, how many spells my mother wrought, they remained childless."

Brennan's voice tightened as she paused for breath, her blue eyes sparkling as she struggled to explain to him how she came to be.

"Eventually, desperate for a child, my mother choose to invoke a power that was shunned by our people because it was seen as too dark, too uncontrollable, too random and chaotic. But, she knew, or at least she thought she knew, that she was skilled enough and smart enough to control it. So, with the help of my father, they summoned The One. And, a deal was struck. Nine months to the day, I was born at my parents home near St. Mary-le-Bow's Church in Cheapside. For a time, I had a normal childhood. We were a family, a happy family. It was clear from the time I could walk and talk that I'd inherited the gifts of my mother's family. In fact, she always said I'd be better than ever she was because my father had added his own powers to my lineage. She trained me, taught me what she knew, and initiated me in the rites of our heritage on the Samhain of my thirteenth year. That's the night she gave me her silver dagger, the one I'm sure you remember." Brennan asked with a slightly crooked smile.

Nodding, Angel laughed softly and said, "As if I could forget."

"Yes," she said with a slight shrug. "Well, it was mine from that point forward. It's a family heirloom that's always been handed down from eldest daughter to eldest daughter," Brennan said. "And, it was also on that night that the true extent of the deal my parents had made the night I was conceived came to light. My mother gave her life for mine. He wanted me, you see, The One? He knew what I had the potential to be, what I could do and might become. What my mother didn't anticipate is the wording of the deal she struck was that my life would be given to her...but only for a time. After I came of age, it would then be her life for mine. And, so, that's why on the morning of All Soul's Day, the night after she'd initiated me in the Samhain ritual, and I became aware of my powers? That was the day He came to claim her. She died so that her powers could be transferred to me. And, that was how I started on the path to becoming what I am today. Because, when I lost her, I didn't know how to deal...how to cope with the loss of her. I loved her so much, Angel. She was everything to me and then, suddenly, she was gone. She left me. And, I didn't know what to do."

Angel reached for her and touched her arm gently as he listened to her. He opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again, choosing to remain silent but to let his fingertips press gently into her silky skin to acknowledge her words and encourage her to continue.

"I sunk into a deep depression," she said quietly. "You see, after my father explained what had happened, I couldn't bear the guilt that I'd, in essence, killed my mother. So, to survive that...I did what I had to do. I summoned Him, and tried to see if I could strike a new bargain that might bring my mother back. Might let her live again. When He told me that was beyond even His power, but that He might have something else He could tempt me with, well—that was the day I struck what would become the first of many bargains. For a price, I'd have everything I ever wanted...power, wealth, immortality...anything I wanted, except for the resurrection of my mother. And, so, knowing that I made my bargain. And He was only too happy to make it. Because, He thought He'd outsmarted me, like He'd done my mother. He thought He'd only have to bide His time and then He could have what He'd craved since the night my mother and father first summoned Him."

Angel swallowed, stroking his thumb over the top of her hand. He watched the muscles of her face twitch ever so slightly as her expressions shifted, belying the steadiness with which she had been telling her tale. His mouth gaped open slightly as the realization dawned on him. _She's never told anyone this before, _he thought. _This story she's telling me is one she's held inside of her for almost four hundred years. _He closed his hand around hers and felt the living warmth of her skin and the gentle throb of the pulse in her thumb. _She trusts me, _he told himself. _She really does. I'm not sure why or how...but she does. I know she does. This woman who trusts very few people—maybe none, to be perfectly honest—trusts me enough to open herself up and tell me this. _He felt a flutter of warmth in his belly at the thought of it. _She's changed somehow. It's not just me. We've both changed, haven't we? What this is, whatever we have between us now—it's different than what we had before because we are not, either of us, who we were before._

He leaned his head to the side, pursed his lips and smiled. "What did he want, Bren?" he finally asked her.

"My soul," she said softly. "But, I was smarter than Him. For, the terms of the contract, you see...I found a way to ensure that I had a chance to make it so that He wouldn't get my soul. I safeguarded it by protecting it until I found the right person to act as its custodian so that He'd never be able to take it away from me. And, I think...that maybe, the person that I've been waiting for all this time might be...well, I think it might be you, Angel. Somehow, some way, I think it's you."

Angel raised his eyebrows, his forehead crinkling as he struggled to take in everything he'd heard. He sat up straight and rubbed his brow, shaking his head as he tried to make sense of her words in his own mind. He watched her eyes, glittering as they did in the warm flickering light of the fire and the half-burned candles, and he felt lightheaded, something which he hadn't felt in a very long time. _Me? _he felt a swirling sensation in his gut. _She actually thinks I'm the one to protect her—and her immortal soul—from being seized by The One? _Angel felt a tightness in his chest and his eyes darted around the room, as if the clarity he sought was tucked away in one of the dark corners of the room. _She thinks I'm the right person to do this? After everything I've done? After all the time I've been gone? She actually trusts me enough to...to put her very soul in my care? _He stared at the flame that licked and danced in the fireplace, then looked back up at her.

"You mean...you're saying that you can keep your soul from being taken by The One if your soul has a custodian, and, umm, I'm that custodian?" He felt a shiver run down his spine as he watched her dark-rimmed pale eyes flicker back at him. "Of course, I want to help you, Bren," he said. "I don't know what this means, but...I feel like, well—no, I know that I'd do anything for you." He paused and clasped her hand between his. "Tell me more," he pleaded. "I-I...whatever you need. Tell me so that I can do this thing for you, Bren. But I need to know more. How does it work? What can I do? Just...tell me. I need to know everything." He pressed his lips together in firm line, then nodded. "Tell me everything, Bren."

"Alright," Brennan nodded. "When we struck our deal, He had his goals, and I had mine. The agreement was made that after five hundred years, if I couldn't find a suitable custodian of my soul, He'd get to choose one for me since I'd specified that He couldn't take direct control of it Himself. So, He countered by stipulating that the custodian had to be an immortal with evil in his heart."

Angel blinked, his eyebrows furrowing hard over his dark eyes. "Evil in his heart?" he gulped. He felt a clenching in his chest, where his heart lay still and unbeating, and he heard the voice of his soulless appetites—the dark spirit of Angelus lived on inside of him, constrained only by the soul he'd been cursed with twenty-five years before—murmuring in the back of his mind. His jaw tensed and his nostrils flared as he tried to silence the now caged Angelus. "I don't understand," he said. "Why?"

"I suppose He did that with the idea being that I'd never find an evil immortal to whom I'd willing entrust my soul—or, at least the witch's third that I would have to give away since my soul was partitioned into three parts when I struck the deal—because...well, you know that if one has control of a witch's soul, it gives the keeper the power of compulsion over the witch. And, usually, the more powerful the witch, in the past, the quicker an immortal has been to try to find a way to destroy the witch so that her powers might be added to the guardian's." She gazed into Angel's deep brown eyes to gauge his response. "So, such bindings in the past have rarely occurred, and if they did, they didn't last very long," Brennan explained.

"What does this mean, Bren?" Angel asked. "I mean, are you sure?" He caressed her hand, letting his fingertips skim over the faint purple veins that shone through her pale, almost translucent skin. "How can you be sure that...well...that I'm the one?"

"I knew from a spell I cast," Brennan said, "that I'd know the immortal in whom I could trust by the fact that not only would my powers become amplified in his presence, since that denoted our compatibility, but also because there would be a physical sign that acted as proof when we came into close contact with one another."

"The blue sparks?" Angel guessed. "The flashes of electricity?"

Brennan nodded slowly, then gave him a knowing look before she continued. "That's how I knew, potentially, what you might be, because of the physical manifestation of my powers actually corporealizing, but I pushed it aside because while I had many feelings for you when you were Angelus..." Brennan laughed. "Well, sweetness, trust was never one of them."

"I can't really blame you there," he shrugged, cringing slightly at the memory of the man he used to be when they were last together. "But...tonight? Something's changed, I think. Something's different, isn't it?"

"_You _are," Brennan whispered. "As I said, I don't know how or why, but my magic...my powers...the core of my very essence has already started to bind itself to you. So...if you're willing to take on this burden...I will freely give myself to you, Angel—what I am—the very core of everything I am. I'd give it freely into your keeping...if you're willing to accept my offer."

Angel stared at her for a long moment, then reached out, and grabbed her hand, holding it between his. Stroking it slowly, he asked. "Bren," he whispered. "After all I've done, all these years, and all the time we've been apart, are you sure?" He hesitated, holding the inside of his lip between his teeth as he blinked away the memory of the bodies he'd left in his wake one night as he'd made his way from the terraced house where he lived with Darla to Brennan's home in Cheapside. "You know what I was, Bren," he said with a grimness in his voice. "And you know—you know that the darkness never went away, right? It's still inside of me. I know you know that. If you do this thing, and bind yourself to me for all of eternity, you'll be bound to all of me."

Brennan pulled her hand away from his grasp and reached up to cup his jaw. She smiled as she drew her thumb over the smooth, cool skin of his cheekbone. "Yes," she said. "I know what you are, Angel. I've always known. I couldn't...if that darkness weren't inside you, I wouldn't even be able to make you this offer that is probably less a gift and more a burden than it would at first seem. And, well, after tonight, Angel—you know what I am." She fell quiet for a moment, then added, "I like who you are now. Very much. And, I'd like to think that maybe you like who I am. So, yes. That's my answer to your question. I do want this—if you really want it. If you're willing to do this thing for me?"

"Yes," he said, turning his head and pressing his cheek against her hand, closing his eyes as he savored the warmth of her touch. "I want to do this for you. Tell me what I must do. How's it done?"

Brennan felt a flash of warmth blossom in her chest. Her hand fell away from his face as she asked warily, "Are you certain? Because...the ritual is simple enough, but I can't...it can only be done once, Angel. I can't undo it. Once it's completed, we'll be linked. Forever."

"Bren," he said quietly, placing his hand on her bare knee. "We're already linked." He looked down at the way his darker, olive skin contrasted against her pale, porcelain skin. "We've been linked, I think, for a long time. I didn't spent the last twenty-five years thinking about you just because of the way we enjoyed each others' bodies all those years ago. It was more than that, wasn't it? More than just the fucking, as good as the sex was." He watched as a faint smile flashed across her face, then fade away again. "And tonight? The way you found me out there? And what it felt like when you did? And what it felt like when we came together tonight, at last, after all these years?" He glanced over at a candle flickering on her nightstand, then brought his gaze back to hers. "I think you've been a part of me for a long time, Bren. Long before tonight, and long before I realized it. I'm not sure how or why, but I believe that to be the truth of things." His fingers curled up and he began to draw gentle circles on her knee. "I'd like to think the same is true for you, Bren." He hesitated for a moment, but before she could answer, he spoke again. "So, tell me...what do we have to do?"

She smiled the most lovely smile she'd ever smiled at him and then said, "As I said earlier, I don't think it's coincidence we found each other tonight, Angel. Because...the ritual that would bind us? I can only convey it when I'm at my most powerful...during the three days of the sabbath because that's the traditional time of the year that the shields between the realms of the world of the living and the world of the dead are thinnest. That's why I'm simultaneously at my strongest and at my weakest because these three days are when the witch is most powerful because of the thinning of the realms. Magic from both sides flows freely, and so this is the only time of year when I could give a part of my soul into your keeping."

"And, by accepting this...this part of you, you're saying that by me accepting this, that I'd have the power to destroy you?" Angel asked, though he knew the answer the moment he asked.

Slowly, Brennan nodded. "If you accept what I'm willing to give you, then I've bound myself to you, Angel. You'll be able to use that to compel me to do what you want, when you want, how you want. I'm, in effect, making you a guardian whereby you'll always have a piece of me that will fasten us together. It...since I've never done it before, I can't say for certain what will happen if you accept it and don't use it against me. But, it will join us in a symbiotic relationship. Forever...or, at least as long as you choose not to use it to break me."

"Bren," he said, his voice low and heavy with feeling even as he smiled back at her. "You know I'd never do anything to hurt you, don't you?"

"Yes, but," she responded quietly. "The temptation's great, I know. I wouldn't blame you if you did. But, it's a risk I'm willing to take because I'd rather be bent, domesticated, and broken at your hands than at His. At least this way...I still have a choice."

Angel was silent for a minute and then said thoughtfully, "We don't have to do this now. You said yourself...you have until the 500th anniversary. That means you still have a century to make a suitable choice. One that you can trust. One that you won't regret."

"No," she told him with a firm shake of his head. "Don't you understand, Angel? I've already made my choice. That is, if you'll accept it. If you'll have me...if you'll take up the burden I freely offer you? It's you. Just you, Angel. I choose you...if you're willing."

"I am," he said, nodding slowly. "I want to. And, I promise you—you'll _never _regret doing this, Bren. You'll never regret trusting me. I'll never betray you. I'll never use this against you. I'll never hurt you, I swear. I'll do whatever I have to do to safeguard that which you've given into my keeping."

"A part of my soul," Brennan said softly, even as the familiar electric blue energy began to crackle around them. "The witch's third. I entrust you with the witch's third of my soul. You, and only you, Angel. Tonight, on this night, I freely give it."

"And, I freely accept it," he said solemnly. "I do."

Squeezing his fingers, Brennan nodded. Angel blinked as he felt a surge of power jump from her to him. When it was said and done, she slumped forward slightly towards him, and he sat up, coming towards her a bit straighter, a bit more confident than he'd been just a minute before.

For a moment, Angel would have sworn that his dead heart had started beating again, the way his chest seemed to swell with warmth and feeling as the energy that had surged into him took root, weaving its threads into the sinews of his limbs and the ropy folds of his mind. At first, it seemed like a flash of hyperawareness as everything he laid his eyes on—her face, her eyes, the bedsheets they sat on, the dancing flames of the candles in the room, the warm waves of heat rolling off the fire in the hearth—but it became clear that it was not just a matter of visual or sensory acuity. He felt a steadiness, as if the shifting sands beneath his feet had suddenly hardened into stone. The feeling of being lost which he'd known for more than two decades seemed to dim and flicker, and after a few minutes, go away entirely.

"Bren?" he asked, worry clear in his voice as he saw her body when it started to shake a bit.

"I'm...I'm okay," she said, squeezing her eyes shut as she took a deep breath of air followed by another and then another. Eventually, she murmured, "I'm just a bit dizzy. That's all."

"Breathe," he told her, cupping his palm around the crown of her head as he stroked her hair with the pads of his fingers. "Deep breaths. In and out."

"I am," she said wearily as the world spun around her, her heart rate increasing as she tried to steady herself. "Or...at least, I'm trying."

"It'll pass," he whispered, smiling adoringly at her as he felt an energy pulsing inside of him. "I'm sure it will pass fairly soon."

"I know," she whispered. "The hard part...the hard part is...it's done now."

After a minute, when she'd stopped shaking and was still once more, he reached out and began to rub the flat of his palm across her naked shoulder in what he hoped was a soothing and comforting gesture of reassurance. "So, what else do we have to do?" he asked when he saw her open her eyes and look at him with gratitude clearly visible in her blue eyes. "What else can I do?"

"Stay," she said simply. "Just stay."

"That's it?" he asked, uncertain that she needed more from him, but was afraid to ask. "Because if it's not, you needn't worry. Just tell me...whatever you need. It's yours. I'll do it. Just tell me."

Brennan smiled at him weakly and then said, "You must stay with me until the sabbath ends on All Soul's Day so that the bond we've knit can have time to set. That's all."

He considered her words for a minute, then nodded with a grin and said, "I think I can do that."

Her response, this time, was a simple but radiant smile that made Angel as happy as he could remember having felt in sometime. Leaning forward, he pulled her to him and sealed their bargain with a gentle kiss that held all the promise of what was to come...and what would be between the pair.

* * *

Angel leaned to the side and snaked his arm around Brennan's waist, bringing his hand over her hip and spreading his fingers in a fanlike shape over the ivory plane of her belly. Though his heart did not beat, he smiled at the warm, pulsing feeling that oozed through his unbreathing chest at feeling her head tucked in the crook where his arm and shoulder met. She turned her head, pressing her lips to the sweat-damp skin of his chest as she reached over with her left hand and grabbed his right, chuckling softly as she gently forced his fingers apart so that she could intertwine hers with his. Angel looked down at the way his long, thick, dark-skinned fingers dwarfed her smaller, slender, paler ones and pursed his lips. He felt the energy, faint but definitely noticeable, strange and yet not unpleasant, tingle through him as she lay curled up against his side, her head resting against his chest. It pulsed with an even rhythm, like a heartbeat, feeling each time as if it were tickling the underside of his skin.

As he lay there with her, a vague memory from his childhood nudged into the forefront of his consciousness, and he remembered running through the cobblestone streets of Galway with a pair of other boys. He wasn't sure whether they were running towards something or away from it, but as he felt the soles of his shoes slide over the uneven surface of the cobblestones, he felt a hum in his belly that surged out and through his limbs, all the way to the tips of his fingers, making the hair on his arms stand on end. The size and shape of his hands in the memory gave him the impression that he had been perhaps ten or twelve years old in this memory, not yet anywhere near a man but more than a boy. The memory, deeply faded after nearly two centuries, seemed like it had been lived an aeon ago, but the feeling, the buzzing energy, struck him as familiar.

Turning his eyes to the woman in his arms, he knew that the feeling he felt in that memory was not of the kind he felt now, having just enjoyed a vigorous turn between the sheets with his longtime, erstwhile lover and the inevitable release, breaking just moments after he'd felt her shatter around him.

_No, _he thought, _that's not it. _

He blinked a couple of times, wondering if the vaguely familiar sensation was one of excitement, but after kneading his lip between his teeth for a minute, that didn't seem right, either. He imagined his boyish feet running over the cobblestones the way only a well-acquainted pair of feet could, each foot falling in front of the other with breathless purpose as he ran through the alleys behind the long, brick warehouses adjacent to the quayside.

_Purpose._

A shiver rolled up his spine at the thought.

_This, _he thought, _this is what I didn't have. _

He thought of where she'd found him, just a few hours before, in an alley behind another brick warehouse, the cold wind nipping under his coat as he rifled through a pile of ruined wooden pallets, looking for a scrap of the right size and shape to use as a stake to end himself. In that alley, he'd arrived at the conclusion that he was unwanted, worthless and unredeemable, his life too sodden with pain and too bereft of any purpose to be worth living. Then she found him, her blue eyes shimmering in the shadow of the meatpacking warehouse, just out of reach of the flickering electric street light. She'd found him, taken him in, cleaned him up, cared for him, and made him feel wanted, worthy and, perhaps more than anything, capable of some kind of redemption. Then she'd gave him the gift that would redeem him and enable him to find the thing he was missing most sorely...

_Purpose._

Angel bent his head a little and pressed a light kiss on her forehead. Brennan's hand, which had been squeezing and unsqueezing his gently as their fingers lay intertwined, finally stilled, and as he felt the warm, soft puffs of her breath on his sticky skin slow to a scarcely-detectable intermittence, he knew that she'd fallen asleep. Even in that sleep, she snuggled closer to him, as if drawn to him for no other reason than what part of herself she'd given into his keeping. He smiled against the skin of her brow and kissed her again, then felt his own eyelids grow heavy, his thoughts lazy as his mind let go of everything except for the thought of how silky her hair felt beneath his stroking fingertips and the sound of her tiny little snores, faint little wisps that might not have been noticed by anyone not gifted as he was with unnaturally keen hearing. A few more minutes passed in such near-silence before Angel, too, fell asleep, his arms wrapped around her slumbering form.

Some hours later—how many, Brennan did not know, nor could she bring her groggy mind to care in the moments after her eyes fluttered open—she woke up and found herself curled up in her bed, comfortable and warm in the down comforter that was wrapped snugly around her shoulders and the warm flannel sheets that caressed her naked body. Her eyes closed again and she murmured something inaudible and inconsequential into the duvet before her eyes opened once more with a start. She looked over and saw the cream-colored sheets next to her slightly creased, as if by sweat, but when her hand slid across the mattress and found the fabric cool to the touch, too cold to have had anyone sleeping on them recently, not even a cool-skinned vampire, her heart began to race.

"Angel?" she called out, her voice hoarse from sleep. She cleared her voice and called out to him again. "Angel?"

After a few moments, the bedroom door creaked open and a dark-headed, clean-shaven face appeared in the doorway.

"You're awake," he said with a smile. He stood there wearing a pair of charcoal-hued wool trousers he'd found folded on the top of her dresser along with a white, tank-style undershirt and suspenders. She glanced down and saw him wiggling his bare toes against the well-burnished hardwood floor at the entrance to her bedroom.

"Yes, obviously," she said, returning his smile as she sat up in bed and propped a pillow behind her back. A hardness formed in her throat as she saw him standing there, a confident grin on his face as he raked his hand through the couple of inches of brown hair she'd left on the top of his head. Her stomach clenched as a wave of nausea washed over her. "You're not...tell me you're not leaving," she said.

He opened the door all the way and slid his hand into the pocket of his trousers as he cocked his head to the side. "No," he said. "I'm not leaving, Bren."

She let out a breath she hadn't, until that moment, even realized she was holding. "Oh, good," she said with a heavy sigh of relief. "That's...that's very good. Not that I was worried or anything." She looked up at him with a bit of a sheepish grin cracking her face. "Because, I wasn't."

"Of course not," he said with a small smile of his own playing at the corners of his mouth. "How are you doing?"

Her eyes skimmed along the hard, muscular line of his arm from his wrist, up his forearm to the edge of his bicep to the round of his shoulder. He had, indeed, shed a substantial quantity of muscle mass since the last time she'd seen him, noticeable to her after all of the nights she'd spent gazing on the form of his body. Her gaze fell to his belly, concealed by the white ribbed fabric of his undershirt. No sooner had she turned her focus to his stomach than her own seemed to cry out for attention, gurgling its frustrations at her beneath the covers.

"I'm hungry," she grumbled. "I imagine you are, too."

"Yes," he said with a lopsided grin. "What are ya hungry for?" he asked her, a faint reminder of his long-faded Irish brogue ringing through on the edges of his voice. "Let's take care of your hunger and then we'll see about mine." His dark eyes glittered with laughter at his own double entendre.

"Mmmm," Brennan murmured as she reached up and tucked a strand of her sleep-tousled hair behind her ear. "I'd kill for some caffeine...and maybe something sweet?"

"Kill?" he coughed. "Well, you needn't worry about having to do that." Angel turned and looked over his shoulder towards her kitchen, wrinkling his nose as he turned back to face her. "Give me a minute, mmm-kay?" He held up a finger and waggled it gently, then turned and walked away.

Brennan watched him disappear around the corner and after few seconds heard the whistle of a tea kettle. She listened to him pour the water and shuffle around, clanking around a bit in a way that was loud enough and awkward enough to her ears that she couldn't help but smile to think that, for a stealthy, night-stalking creature of darkness, he was making a tremendous racket in the kitchen. Her forehead creased impatiently as she sat in bed and waited for him to return.

A few minutes passed before Angel once again filled the doorway of her bedroom, nudging it open with his elbow as he walked in with a large wooden tray. Brennan sat up in bed, fluffing the pillows and arranging them as a bolster behind her back as she extended her legs beneath the duvet. Angel grinned as he set the tray down, its legs settling into the down on each side of her lap. Glancing up to briefly meet her bright blue eyes before returning his attention to her breakfast tray, he checked the tea to ensure it was steeped as suited her tastes, then picked up a china cup and poured her tea, careful to leave her just enough room for milk. He smiled at a private amusement as he added just a splash of milk, watched it billow in the dark liquid as it rose to the top, then stirred it gently before handing her the cup and saucer.

"Here you go," he said with a grin, watching her with an arched brow as she brought the cup to her lips.

"After almost twenty-five years, you still remember how I take my tea?" she said with a chuckle.

Angel shrugged as he reached over and placed a raisin scone on a small plate, waiting for her to set down her cup and saucer before handing her the crumbly treat. "I haven't forgotten anything, Bren," he said in a low, even voice. "I remember everything about you."

Brennan laughed. "And, I remember you like your tea steeped dark," she said. She took a bite of the cherry scone and made a humming sound as the sweetness hit her tongue.

"Dark, strong, intense and Irish," he said. "Like me." He paused and winked. "Three out of four ain't bad."

"Is this your not-so-subtle way of revealing your plan to charm me into drinking Irish tea?" she asked with eyes narrowed in feigned skepticism as she chewed the bit of scone she'd eaten, swallowed it, and then reached for another bit.

"Rome wasn't built in a day," he quipped. "I'll have you change your ways yet."

"Hmmmph," she replied noncommittally. "We'll have to see about that."

And with that, they raised their cups of tea, Angel tipping his in silent, smiling acknowledgement, and they drank.

After a minute, when the pair set the tea cups down and Angel moved the tray to the the top of her dresser, she gestured for him to join her in bed. He happily complied and when he was seated next to her, he asked in a quiet voice, "Are you really okay, lass?"

She was silent and then nodded at him. "For the first time in a long time, I think—well, yes. I think I'm going to be okay." Tilting her head, she nodded at him and asked, "Are you, Angel? Really and truly?"

He stared at her, daring to reach out once more to touch her face, and leaned forward to kiss her. He stopped just short of her lips, and when brown eyes met blue, he nodded with a soft smile on his face, "You know, for the first time in a long time, I think—well, yeah, Bren. I think I'm going to be okay."

As she looked at him for a moment, her eyes flashed a brighter blue, and she sealed their bargain with one more kiss to start the new day.

* * *

**~The End~**

* * *

**A/N2- **So, there you have it. We hope you enjoyed this part of our Angel(us)/Brennan arc. To date, this piece was the most difficult to write, and we hope you can now see why. It's very complex, and lots of things are being put into play that will explain why things turn out the way they do later on do the line. As this is a cross-over piece, one thing that both writers have striven to do is stay as true to the canon of both shows as possible. For example, who would've thunk it, but the show does really establish that Angel was trolling the streets of Chicago in the 1920s. Isn't that the weirdest coinkydink ever, huh? Anyway, we will continue to do this in the remaining five of nine pieces that will tell this tale.

Next up, we take a big time jump. It's Los Angeles, 2003. Brennan travels to LA to see Angel on Halloween. For those familiar with _Angel _canon, that places our storyline in tandem with that show's early season 5. In addition, to those with good memories, you may recall that _Angel _only had one Halloween-themed episode in its entire five-year run. For us, it wasn't coincidence. We'll give no more hints than that since one of us already thinks we said too much. But, hopefully, your curiosity is piqued and your whistles have been wet. If you'd like to see what comes next...and have enjoyed this behemoth of a posting monstrosity, please...let us know what you think. We sincerely appreciate it many times over in advance and extend to you our thanks.


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